Into Africa

Sorry for not keeping up with this, but internet access was not readily available for some time. I have a lot of catching up to do and then will try to load some photos from the trip and that will be all I think for this blog.

In the last blog I mentioned going to the game Shamwari Game Reserve. It was worth the high price - got to see all of the big game species except for the cape buffalo. Even saw a leopard which is apparently quite rare. After a very nice lunch you are loaded into a Land Rover with extra seats attached. There were 7 in our vehicle and about 7 vehicles out in the park including those of people staying over night. The driver/guides communicate by radio when there is something good to see. Our driver heard about the leopard just about quitting time as it was getting dark. His only comment was, "Hold on!" as we took off across the grassland, including going off the road to get to where the leopard was. I better understand the toughness of a Land Rover after this and also how silly it is to have such a vehicle in the city. We also saw a pride of 9 lions eating a freshly-caught wart hog, rhinos right beside the truck, giraffes, elephants, etc. Next day I went to the Addo Elephant National Park - to see elephants and a few other animals. There were 60+ elephants of all ages at a water hole. Pretty spectacular!

From there, it was off to Graff-Reinet which is a lovely town in the Karoo semi-desert. When you come from a humid environment like southern Ontario you do not realize the critical linkage between water sources and settlement (and survival for that matter) in a dry place. There is a small river here and it means that the town can exist. It was lovely although apparently temps of 45C are the norm in the summer. It is a service centre for the region and a bit of an arty/historical place as well. It is the third oldest Boer settlement in the country (late 1600s) and has many lovely buildings.

Back to the coast next to summer resort called Knyssna. It is very nice but had traffic problems in April - can only imagine what it is like in the high season. It would not look out of place in coastal Georgia although it is much prettier since the mountains come to the sea here. Again the difference between poor and rich is amazing. The wealthy are living in a dream world of luxury and privilege - except that most of them are armed all of the time. I got a car wash and it was done by a total of 8 people and cost something less than CA$5. The gas station had about 20 people working at it - not counting any inside the building. Unemployment is a big problem but there is much underemployment (and poor wages) too.

Next, on my trip westward toward Cape Town was a stay in wine country. Vineyards in RSA look very different than those here since the surrounding areas are so dry and the vineyards are all irrigated. There rainy season (winter) has failed the last three years and there are considerable concerns about the declining water table. They really hope that this year (Apr-July) is wetter. I also went on a tour of a huge brandy distillery - the largest in the world. It was very interesting. I am not a brandy drinker but their 10 year old was quite good. The guide was very expert and taught us how to drink brandy properly. (BTW, in RSA, brandy is the major hard liquor drunk - young brandies are commonly mixed with Coke or lemonade.)

On to Cape Town - it is very beautiful city, not sure I have seen anywhere nicer. The harbour area has been rebuild and it is everything that Toronto's Harbourfront should be but is not. Went to Robben Island where Mandela and many others were prisoners. Our guide was a former political prisoner there - others are former guards. Apparently they get along fine with each other.

In spite of the beauty of the city, crime is a problem here too (although it is much better than Joburg or Durban). On my walk to the harbour area (guide book said be sure to keep to the main road) I met two young women - one from US, one from Canada (Yellowknife of all places). The previous day they had been robbed at knife-point by three men at a major tourist location. I really have serious fears for South Africa. There are just too many very poor people and I don't think they will be willing to wait for income to come their way - I suspect that most of the increasing wealth of the country goes to the rich anyway. Rich people of all races are continuing to leave the country in considerable numbers and they are taking money with them too. Two people mentioned something that I had been thinking - there may be huge problem when Mandela dies. He is such a powerful, moral force in the country and there is no one remotely able to replace him in this role.

After Cape Town, it was on to Egypt and Jordan to be a tourist some more. Not really the subject of this blog - just a comment or two. Jordan was great with many terrifici things to see (not much in Amman, but Petra, Jerash, Dead Sea, Wadi Rum were great). Cairo is not very nice as tourists are constantly hassled by people wanting to separate you from your money. Apparently women travelling (even together) are constantly being harassed. The pyramids and the Egyptian Museum are amazing but the rest of the area around Cairo has nothing going for it (did not go upriver - it may be better). We were there when there was a terrorist bomb at a resort in the Sinai. The only real impact in Cairo was a remarkable increase in security. There were police everywhere - probably every 50 m or so on a 45 minute walk from the hotel to museum. These are serious police with AK47s and Kalashnikoffs (you could see where they did their shopping during the Cold War - but I thought they were in the US camp; perhaps the weapons were from Nasser's times). The best thing about all the police is that they sometimes kept the hustlers away from you.

Pictures to follow with a few days I hope.

Just a brief update on the end of my activities in Lesotho and the first few days in South Africa. Last weekend I was able to get a ride to Bethlehem, South Africa (it is on the Jordan River or at least the Jordaan and is not far from Nazareth - the Boers are really religious people and used the Bible to justify their treatment of the Blacks (and Indians and Coloureds). Ray, Carol and Penney were flying home from Jo'burg and we managed to get everything in a quite small car (the trunk had to be tied down). Luckily Bethlehem was not far. I stayed at a guest house downtown and it was luxurious - good mattress and volumes of hot water in the shower.

The difference between Lesotho and RSA (Republic of ) is astonishing. Everything in the latter is modern and advanced. Bethelhem is pretty rich - it has about 60,000 people and BMW and Mercedes (and other car) dealers. And this is with cars costing perhaps 40% more than in Canada. In a used lot a 2 year old Mini-Cooper was still around $30k.

There are still huge wealth differences between white and black people, but there are lots of blacks driving BMWs and fancy pickups. The nicer parts of towns are not just white people, except for economics. Every decent size town has a poor, black suburb (township) outside and these tend to be very dangerous, crime-ridden places. In the nicer parts of town, serious fences and gates are pretty much standard - regardless of the colour of those inside.

Anyway, when I got back to Lesotho I decided to go on a big loop that would allow me to visit both St Charles and Mamohau (and maybe Makhelefane if I thought my car - a 1400 cc VW Clio could make it). Lonely Planet said that the gravel road joining the end of the road past St Charles to the Katse Dam takes taxis about 5 hours and I certainly would be going faster than they would so I assumed it might be 4 hours. Wrong!. The first paved road deteriorated inside pothole city after I went past a big diamond mine. It was a neat road with the highest pass at 3255 m and the country's only ski resort (one lift and about 4 lodges). When I got on the gravel road things really went downhill (and uphill). Night overtook me and I missed a turn (there are no signs). I had pretty much decided to sleep in the car when a truck came along - I asked how far I was from the destination and they said a long way and suggested that I stay at a lodge that was right were I was parked (absolutely in the middle of nowhere on a side road). I have no idea why there would be a lodge there and it was not fancy, but nice to find a bed. It still took three hours+ in the morning to get to Katse for a total of something like 11 hours. In the morning I picked up an older lady who was hitchhiking to her teaching job - turns out she is the mother of Sister Alice who was one of the people responsible for the founding of Help Lesotho. It is such a small country.

The drive was very hard on the car - I got a flat and could even tell it was flat because the road was so bad (rocks sticking up everywhere). The result was that I destroyed the tire (or tyre as they say here - that cost about $90 to replace). I also damaged the exhaust system (broke the pipe of the muffler) but that welding job only cost a little over $10.

Back on the paved road, I went to see the dam - it is remarkable 185 m high and fairly narrow. It allows water to sent to RSA through a tunnel that is something like 150 km long. It is one of eventually 6 dams that will be built at a cost of something like US$18 billion. I also visited with Peter the former deputy principal at Mamohau who is now the principal of Katse HS. I think I arranged a possible partnership between him and one of the merchants in Leribe to grown and sell roses in Amsterdam (not a stupid idea, they do it in Zimbabwe and the air connections there are not as good). This is one of several economic development ideas I have and the furthest along.

Back in Leribe I got the repairs done (the exhaust guy said his shop opens at 7 but I should come at 8 when he arrives - he arrived at 845 and wanted me to consider supporting his ski resort development idea - this happens all of the time. I finally got out of Lesotho at about noon and got into RSA as quickly as possible. The route I took followed the border of Lesotho and I went quite a bit further but it is faster because the roads are quite good - you can average 100 km/hr or more. In Lesotho, the highway is also the main street and there are children and animals everywhere - if you can average 70 you are doing well.

Last night I stayed in a town of about 10,000 called Zastron. The two sons of the owner live in Lethbridge, Alberta of all places and he is thinking of moving there (he looks about 65). According to him, RSA is going in the direction of Zimbabwe - white farmers are being killed and he had an attempted robbery at his hotel with the bad guy shooting at this wife (the bullet hole is now hidden by a printed notice about something). He said the police are OK, but the judges are useless. The robber ended up with a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to attempted murder.

Today my plan was to stay in a place called Grahamstown. I was there for an hour or so trying to get a room - turns out it is the busiest weekend of the year - graduation at Rhodes University. The next town, Bathurst, is having the annual agricultural fair and it is jammed too. I ended up in Port Alfred, which is an ocean resort, although the weather is not very good - cool and wet. Tomorrow I am going to a private game reserve where I may get to see lions, elephants, etc. To say there, single, would cost about$1500 a night (some of these game reserves are more than that). I am going as a day visitor for $160. We visit a place where they rehabilitate lions from zoos and have lunch and then go into the reserve in a land rover with a guide. The various rangers talk to each other about where the animals are so your chances of seeing them is better.

All for now

Last entry from within Lesotho I think. Had an enjoyable last week at St Charles although I must say that I now know a lot more about the expression, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” I bought some chemical spray that was supposed to kill them but not sure how effective it was – in any case, I have a number of bites that look like small mosquito bites and are pretty itchy. Life here has been pretty comfortable in a camping sort of way, although there are exceptions like this and the rat(s).

I got a very nice send off from St Charles today with some nice speeches and a special song sung by their very nice choir. They seemed very sad that I was going and I will miss them too. It is a very nice school with staff that cares about their students. The kids are very good although they are so isolated that they do not have much of an idea of what the world has to offer. When I get back to Canada I will try to figure out what I can do to support this school. They have a couple of big physical plant problems to face. One is that their water system was vandalized (people stole the pipes to build soccer nets) – this job will be something like $6000. The other problem is that some of the school buildings are being torn apart by slumping of the soil on the hill on which the school is located. It looks very much like earthquake damage. In one building there are cracks that are something like 3” wide in the wall and floor and the damage is getting worse. At least three buildings need work and the cost will be in excess of $30,000 – which is a huge amount of money here.

An interesting thing here is the focus on security. Crime is a problem, but not nearly as much as people think it is and react to. The police are not armed but there are security guards in many stores who are armed with shotguns – some of which are nasty ones with pistol grips. At one store in the mountains, the shotgun was held together with packing tape. I think the safest place with that would probably right in front of the barrel when it was fired.

There are many security guards and night watchmen but locks are old skeleton key type and easily broken. The convent is surrounded by a high fence with razor wire on top but the chain and lock to close the gate are permanently together (the key is lost – which is common) and it looks locked, except that it is isn’t – one of the links of the chain has been cut and just hooks onto another part of the chain. At Mamohau, the fence was locked each night, but there was a hole in the wire in the gate was large enough to climb through with a backpack on.

Laura, the Peace Corps worker at St Charles has been told by her superiors that she must move out of the extended village of Seboche because it is not safe enough. They were supposed to have checked this first (she has been there for almost a year) but did not. She is not happy with the idea of moving and is pretty brave too boot – she is an active anti-Bush type from North Carolina after all.

I have had good luck with taxis recently – not full and the music is better on the east/west route than on the southern road to Mamohau.

Good fun with pigs this week. The fence around the pig pen at the school does not keep the pigs in very well and I had to chase little piglets this week. That was fun. There was also a guy chasing one across the soccer field by the church. The man was faster but the big had better steering and knew where he wanted to go. Of course, everyone in sight was cheering for the pig. When last seen, the chase was going in the general direction of the Indian Ocean.

One of the things that I will miss here are the stars at night – you can guess why I might be out looking at the stars at 4 am. It may be my imagination, but the difference in clarity between here and Algonquin Park is as large as the difference between Algonquin and suburban Toronto. I was looking forward to seeing the Southern Cross but it is not too exciting. Orion is much clearer than home – you can see more than just Orion’s Belt; but the neatest thing of all is the amazing clarity of the Milky Way.

Back from the mountains and things are going very well on all fronts. Three of us went up – Penney (who arrived at the same time as I did and has been sharing responsibility for Makhelefane with me – but doing most of the work), Shauna (a ‘youngster’ (24) who had just arrived and will be at Makhefane for the next six weeks) and moi). We discussed plans for the new building. The school principal there is like the Godmother for the whole district and each day a work crew of men and women come from a particular village nearby to work on the building. The foundation is done and the walls are rising. They are entirely made of stone and mud. Penney says the construction is very much like dry, rubble walls in England. The wall is about 80 cm thick and has large stones on the outside and inside and smaller ones and mud in between. They work with great skill and few tools. Including working a tiny quarry they have started near the work site, I have only seen a long, steel pole, two shovels, a pick and a trowel. They do not use a level and their line for keeping the wall straight is woven from grass.

MONEY ALERT CANCELLED – it turns out that there Help Lesotho has enough money to pay for the door, windows and roof materials along with the shoes (below) so no need to donate for this project. If anyone would like to donate, the Help Lesotho site (helplesotho.ca) lists a number of projects needing support. In addition, you can support a poor child so that they continue in school. The number of children with heartbreaking stories is so large.

I have spent the morning shopping for school shoes for children at Makhelefane. There are 99 students who do not have shoes and winter is coming – last winter, a large number of kids were coming to school barefoot, even when there was snow on the ground. One child died of pneumonia last winter. Buying so many children’s shoes is like buying one pair. You know the kids are growing like mad so you want something not too costly. At the same time, you do not want them to fall apart on you (especially considering the rugged conditions in the mountains). There are shoes made in Lesotho, but the manager of a large local store (who sells them) says they are not very good and the soles tend to break. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I bought one girl in the orphan residence here a new pair of sandals in January. She was wearing different shoes on each foot and one of them was missing half of its sole. It is very sad to see such things.

While we there, Penney and I had a really neat experience. She intends to return next year as do Ray and Carol and we had heard of a school called Bokoko which is much poorer than Makhelfane – which is hard to believe considering. We decided to go and see this place. It was 3 ½ hours walk each way over very difficult terrain – perhaps 500 m of vertical and rain on the way back which made it very slippery - and all at 7500'+ elevation. We had to ford a roaring river which was at mid-thigh level for Penney on the way back. Very hard to estimate how far we walked but I would guess 20 to 23 km. The children there, the most attractive little ones you could ever imagine, had never seen a white person. Their first reaction was to run away in fear but then curiosity took over – they would get close and then back away when you looked at them. After a little while we were playing games based on the idea that they were afraid – it was very cute. They all wanted to shake hands and see what my skin was like up close.

The little school has one room which is much smaller than an average Canadian classroom – but there are 88 kids in 5 grades. It is mud inside, floor and walls and there a few holes in the roof. The windows do not have glass and cannot be covered since they are the only source of light (other than the door). Fortunately we had a teacher from Makhelfane there as guide and translator as the two teacher s do not really speak English. We are now planning what can be done there next year. Any materials that would be needed (lumber, paint, glass, etc) would have to be carried in on donkeys. Penney, Ray and Carol could go in on horseback, although it is steep in places.

We could have borrowed horses to go there but it was the funeral of one of the local chiefs and just about everyone with a horse was going. We were invited to come to the funeral and to say a few words (which would have been interesting since few of the folks there would have understood). We begged off which was good because it was starting to get dark by the time we got ‘home’. My muscles and cardio were up to the task, but my knees were pretty sore as was my lower back. In total, it was more than worth it to experience something like this. A last comment about this – Bokoko only goes to Grade 5 and the Grade 6 and 7 kids (there are currently 6 of them) walk this route every day. It boggles the imagination. Almost worth teaching kids in Canada again so that I could respond to their complaints about how hard it is to get to school on snowy days.

Only in Africa
- Speaking of horses … if I see one more example of this I will puke … a family is out for a journey in the mountains, dad is riding his horse, mom is walking with the baby strapped on her back and a load on her head. And this is where a good horse is worth $1000 or more. They could both walk and have a fortune to spend on things that might benefit the whole family.
- Speaking of lack of gender equity … the shoes mentioned before were for 64 girls and 35 boys and yet the population of the school is pretty equal.

This blog will be posted a week late since Saturday, March 11 is Moshoeshoe Day (more on that later) and the internet café is closed. I have moved on to my new school, St Charles HS in a place called Seboche. Not that it matters, but Momohau was due south of Leribe for about 2 ½ hours and St Charles is north-east about an hour and half. I went on Thursday. I was supposed to be picked up at noon but it was more like 330 (this is about typical for how things work here). On the way we stopped seven times for various reasons (again this is typical). Had an interesting experience at one of the stops. There was someone riding a donkey toward the truck and it looked like the donkey was going to keep going straight and run into the truck until the rider directed him away. I now have a better understanding of the intelligence level of these animals.

St Charles is in the foothills in a pretty remote spot with some beautiful mountains not far away. I may try to climb one scenic mountain that looks about 1 km away but may be further than that. The school is quite attractive and about 750 m from where I am living (all downhill on the way there). I am renting a lovely rondavel from a lady. It is a beautiful compound with her house next door (her teenage son lives there). This is the nicest rondavel I have seen (I hope to post pictures when I get back to Canada). It is so well-kept that she even sweeps the dirt in the driveway (she has no car) with a broom leaving an interesting pattern. The pit toilet is not far and well-built and very clean. Water is at a community tap about five minutes away. The only problem is that there is a mouse there. I bought some rat/mouse killer but apparently it takes a few days to work. I will spread this on Sunday and hope it works quickly I have already lost a loaf of bread and I have tried to hang a bag with food from the roof of the rondavel. Will find if it works when I go back.

Leaving Mamohau was a bittersweet experience. The staff and kids were sorry to see me go (one of the older teachers – a very dear soul, said it was sad I was going because “you have become one of us”) At the same time I had come to realize that significant changes were not likely to happen there. The situation at St Charles seems very different from Mamohau. At the former the staff (or at least the department heads that I had a long meeting with) seem very keen and very professional. At Mamohau, the teachers were not like this. The kids at Mamohau work very hard with multiple study sessions each day (including 7 am and 730 pm). At St Charles, the kids apparently are not committed to academics and, since the school is not for boarders, they go home to do chores and have homes without electricity. I do not have electricity and know what it is like to read by candle and oil light. More on St Charles later …

Back to King Moshoeshoe … He created the nation of Lesotho (it was called Basutoland in British protectorate days) in the 1840s. At this time, the Zulus under a king named Shaka and the Matabele under Mzilikazi created a time of ethnic cleansing called the Mfecane in the area to the north and east of here. Moshoeshoe was the chief of a small tribe and he led his people into the mountains of northern Lesotho for safety. Other tribes came here and he came them protection in return for their acceptance of him as king. Over time this came to be a largish group and the Basuto nation was formed. It was more of a confederacy than a tribe. One of the results of this is that the people here share a language but not an appearance. Especially in the mountains there is considerable variation in how the people look. Some have very light complexions – in some cases about my colour with the tan I have. Others have faces with features that look distinctly oriental. Anyway, today is Moshoeshoe Day which is one of the few national holidays. BTW, the political leadership has gone downhill since Mo the Great – who did clever things like welcoming French missionaries into the country to give him advice about how to deal with the British.

White people are called Mahoa (singular is Lahoa). When you meet Mahoa, you can virtually always assume that they are aid workers of one sort or another. Friday night at the Leribe Hotel seems to be Mahoa night. A recent one had a group of Welsh teachers, a US Peace Corps guy, a Canadian doctor who works at the Ontario Health Association clinic here, a French woman who works with World Health Organization, and half a dozen of us from Help Lesotho. When I was in Maseru getting my visa extended, we met two Germans who were doing something with the establishment of local governments here. In the whole time I have been here, I have seen a total of about 6 tourists.

I have been doing some work with getting sponsorships in Canada for students here. One of the things that is really hard is to ask kids how many of their parents are alive since the sponsorships are aimed for those who are single or double orphans. In Canada, we take it for granted that kids have parents (not always the case); but here, most of the kids seem to have one parent at most. I interviewed 8 students for sponsorships and there were a total of 7 parents for them with 2 of them described as ‘very ill’ which means one thing here unfortunately.

This brings me back to funerals – they are just so common here. It is by far the most important social event. Every week I know one or more people who have funerals to go to. It is just so depressing that no one even questions it.

In the ‘Only in Africa’ category:
- the internet café is called something like Cecil Business Services, but should be called Cecilia Business Services since it is run by Cecilia. It seems like having a woman’s name does not work here
- today we went for lunch in South Africa! This involves a fairly short journey to a town called Matputsoe. From here you walk across a bridge with lots of barbed wire and go through customs/immigration there. We walked into the very Boer town of Ficksburg and had lunch in a hotel there and then reversed the process. What a difference! You get there and the houses are nice, it is cleaner, the cars are fancier and there are trees everywhere. There are some white people there but many more blacks and it all seemed pretty prosperous.
- One of the volunteers is at a school where they have a double class of almost 100 students with two teachers. There is an empty classroom next door and when she asked about why they did not split the class she was told that near the end of last year the key broke off in the lock of the door (a common occurrence here since the locks have sort of skeleton keys and they are made of a soft metal) and it has not been fixed.

-- MONEY ALERT --
I am asking if anyone would be interested in contributing money to help complete the community hall (which will be used as a classroom to get the kids out of the tent) at Makhlefekane. The community will be building it from local stone that they collect from the fields but have no money for the windows, doors and roof. I have a lot of use for these people because they are trying to do their best for their children in a community where there is virtually no money and often not enough food. One of the volunteers is raising money to buy shoes for children who walk to school barefoot – even in winter with snow on the ground. If you want to donate for that instead, that would be great.

I have prices for the roof and if anyone would like to chip some money to buy a roof truss, a piece of corrugated iron roofing or something else, that would be great.

If you would like to think of it like this, here are the costs of various things if you would like to buy something:
- a roof truss (shaped like a triangle with bracing – we need 14) is about $40
- a piece of corrugated roofing (we need 42) is about $20
- a piece of translucent fiberglass (so there is more light inside the building – we need 16) is about $30
- the steel door and frame is $140
- depending on size, windows are $30 or $60 (we need two of each)

Donations are tax deductible and should be sent to Help Lesotho, 11 Keefer St., Ottawa, K1N 2J9. Can you indicate with your donation that it is to go to “Makhelefane roof project” and could you drop me an email so I know how much money has been raised for this. Thanks to everyone.

*** It is March 20th and I can update the blog and get it posted.

St Charles is turning out to be great. I wish that I had been here first. The staff are really trying to improve their school and they work hard. Also (teacher) attendance it much better here as well. There are problems though. The students do not do very well on the national exams, I think largely because they do not do much homework. Almost no students have electricity in their homes and quite a few families cannot even afford candles. I have helped my landlady’s son with math by lantern light which was an experience to be sure. As fall comes on here it gets dark earlier and earlier.

I figured out my house!. I thought it looked vaguely familiar and now I realize that it is a Hobbit house from Lord of the Rings. This is more than a coincidence since Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein which is in South Africa not far from here. He left as a child but the image of the rondavel stayed in his mind apparently. Me Francisca, my land lady, is the Martha Stewart of the area. The inside of the house is finished in a salmon colour with off-white patches about 4” by 2”. I thought it was paint but it is actually two colours of mud applied with a wool pad. It is very attractive indeed.

I have won out over the rat with the rat killer. I found it dead under my bed mid-week. It was pretty large and nasty.

There is a young Peace Corps volunteer from North Carolina at the school a few days a week. She was actually here to work with the agriculture department but a very nasty sexual harassment situation has developed there and the Corps have withdrawn her from that job. She is teaching biology and health even though she has no teacher training. Quite a challenge with classes of fifty or so in a language the students do not know well. Apparently the students can understand her slight Carolina drawl more easily than my accent. She is somewhat involved with a situation where a step-father has been raping a 9 year old child. This sort of thing happens pretty often around here unfortunately. A real complication is that if (when) the man is put in jail (likely to happen) the family will have no financial support. I checked with the Sister who is the principal at the school and she said the protocol is that the chief is informed. He investigates and brings in the police. It is also his responsibility to look after the family.

This weekend four of us went to one of the few well-developed tourist facilities in the country – Malealea lodge. There where about 30 or so tourists there including some on adventure tours of Southern Africa in an off-road bus (a large powerful vehicle to be sure), some long-distance hikers, some aid workers taking a break. They have comfortable accommodation and showers that produce large amounts of hot water. This may not sound like much, but when you are used to a trickle it matters! I had not had a proper shower since mid-January in Jo’burg. We went ‘pony-trekking’ for three hours. These are actually small horses very used to the rough terrain. It was great fun and my new friend Waldo the Wonder Horse let me feel like I was steering except for moments when he really wanted to be in charge (over rocks or down steep bits). We went out of an hour or so and then hiked down into a gorge to look at San (Bushmen) rock paintings that are something more than 10,000 years old. The San have been dated in the area to 27,000 years ago but the paintings are newer.

Enough for now. I am off to the mountains in an hour or so. Apparently they are getting frost there some nights now.

The weather is starting to turn now. There is a definite feeling of early fall in the morning, especially in the mountains. The good news is that it has not rained in four days. Hope this is a trend. The newspaper here is saying that abnormally high rains are expected for March. We shall see.

I am being transferred from Mamohau to a school in the foothills called St. Charles next week (March 8th). I really was not getting anywhere at Mamohau since they did not really understand why I was there and there was no real commitment from principal or staff to school improvement and change. I think that much of the problem was that Help Lesotho did not have accurate information about the school’s situation and there had not been enough liaison between them and the school to establish what the school really wanted (they were looking for a free teacher for a whole year) and what the NGO wanted to provide. The school had my work plan months ago but no one would admit having read it. I think the school could be very much improved but it was not going to happen with them thinking that everything in the school was just fine.

Apparently St Charles are very excited that I am coming and want help with math (who doesn’t here). I may also be helping at another school near there called Bokoro. These are about an hour north-east of Leribe, past a larger town called Butha-Bothe, but in the country somewhere. More next time about them. I also have to figure out how to get my junk down from the mountain and where my living arrangements will be at St Charles. My time there will be somewhat short as I am going to tour around southern South Africa for the first two weeks in April. During this time I also want to talk to some people in the other end of Lesotho about a possible tourism micro-enterprise to get people from North America and Europe to come to Lesotho and South Africa. Little is known about the former and there is a lot of misinformation about the latter at home. Also the last week in March is used for quarterly exams so any teaching I do will have to be before then. I can, hopefully, meet with teachers during the exam time.

This week we did out major project at Makhelefane, way up in the mountains. We had the wood precut in Leribe and loaded up a 4wd pickup that we hired (it looked like it might not fit but did). We also took paint and other things. When we got there, we assembled 25 benches (each bench could hold 5 small bums) and fixed another 10 or so that needed work. We also painted the walls of one classroom white – the walls and floor are coated with a mixture of mud and cow dung (no smell though!) but the result is a dark brown wall that absorbs all the light. The principal said that having the white walls was like having two or three new windows. It was a remarkable change.

We also took four new blackboards since the ones they had were literally falling apart. The blackboards are very simple. You buy a piece of masonite and paint it with special blackboard paint. The school had some green paint and some black paint (provided by UNICEF). In addition, Penney, who hit up her family and friends for money for this, had 230 school bags made from denim by a local woman. These cost less than $3 each and are very nicely made (with a name tag) – this allows the kids to carry their stuff to and from school. Some kids walk for as much as 90 minutes each way to school. We also made what are called lapboards (from more Masonite) for the kids to write on (there is not room for desks if we could afford them). The final purchase was 100+ spoons. The kids get breakfast and lunch at school and had to eat their sorghum porridge with their hands.

It is a remarkably poor place. There is evidence of foreign aid everywhere – a ‘school in a box’ from Denmark, corn meal from the US, an ongoing food supply system from the UN World Food Program, and us. Penney is now trying to get some money to buy shoes for the kids. Last winter a student who walked to school in bare feet, caught something and died. This is in an area where it does snow and temperatures can be below zero.

The people work hard. They have gotten fed up with waiting for the government to build a promised new school building to replace the tent that is used for grades 1 to 3. They have started to build a ‘community hall’ in which these classes can be taught until the building appears (the Japanese govt have just build something like 200 classrooms to replace tents in various places). The building will be made of local rocks that are piled up dry (no mortar). The women carry the rocks to the site on their heads and the men have dug the foundation and are now building the walls. The gaps are filled with the mud/dung mixture. They have no money to put a roof on the building but I think I will try to organize donations to pay for this. I have a lot of use for people who do their best to be self-sufficient in a very difficult environment like this.

Apparently there are schools off the (terrible) road to the diamond mine that are much worse off than Makhlefane. I can’t imagine what they are like. To get to them, you take the 4wd and then walk. Stuff that is needed there is carried by donkeys or people.

In the Only In Africa (OIA) category:
- One of the volunteers, Carol, was heading up into the mountains in a taxi (15 passenger) when they were stopped at a police checkpoint. Turned out the driver did not have a license, so he was told to drive to the local police station where we was escorted by two cops to the holding cells (not having a license did not seem to be a problem with this drive). The packed taxi was left sitting there until someone called the company to complain.
- The things that women carry on their heads is remarkable. At the school BBQ a while back, one of the women was carrying a case of 24 beer on her head and another in her arms. I said that in much of Canada, this talent would make her very popular. I saw a woman with a huge cabbage on her head – not only was it heavy and hard, it was round.
-Women do so much work here. On the drive here – at something like 9000’ elevation there was a couple traveling to the nearby village (there is nothing else around) which was about 5 km away. The may was riding on his horse with no packages to hold while the wife was walking behind with a big burden on her head. Some of the really bright high school girls are becoming feminists, even though they do not even know the word or concept. I think this is a very hopeful development for the country.
- One of the Bible teachers at Mamohau runs 4 or 5 marathons a year. He is 56, about 5’2” and has quite a pot-belly. He did a marathon in a nearby part of South Africa last weekend called the Surrender Hill Marathon. Not sure if the name refers to the course (the finish is uphill) or to some Boer War battle. He has decided he wants to run the Two Oceans race in South Africa next. This little race is only 82 km but before he does it he has to join a track club because only sanctioned athletes can go in this race.
- Teacher absence (and principal absence) is a huge problem. It is not that they take a day off – they will go for 4 or 5 days at a time.
- Classes are only 40 minutes and teachers are routinely late. I checked for two classes and in each case only one teacher of about 10 was on time for class (this was the same person). Lateness varied from 2 minutes to 10 minutes.
- Funerals are the most important social event here. Most are on Saturdays and for example, two of the nuns at the convent here and one of the sponsored girls are at funerals today. Just about the biggest industry are funeral parlours and they all seem to be expanding and have fancy new hearses (Mercedes and Toyota).
- It is not considered rude to interrupt a conversation here. Someone just walks up and starts talking to the person you are talking to – no apologies or anything like that.
- You get used to things being so different. In Mahkelefane, Ray was staying in a different rondavel. We realized that we had to walk up the road and turn right at the pig that did not move for hours at a time (until food came). Having cows and sheep in the main street or people riding horses and donkeys are the new normal. I wonder about my reaction back home.
- For those who don’t know, I drive a Volvo V40 (mini-Volvo). I just saw one here and it looked huge. The cars here are quite small – not a surprise since gas is about the same price as Canada.
- At Makhlefane, the students make their own skipping ropes by braiding grass. They are quite interesting things to look at.
- When we there, the most hi-tech things within several km were the LED flashlights we had.
- It was an interesting experience having an audience of a hundred or more little faces watching closely as we nailed benches together.

All for now.

Before I start I must apologize for any duplication between reports. I do not have easy access to earlier reports and have to rely on memory which is not a good thing.

Things are not going very well at Mamohau and I may end up changing schools for the last month or so. The problem has been there from the start (when I was not picked up on the day arranged), but I guess my optimism made me think that I could overcome this. The school was chosen for twinning and to receive a volunteer because of the strong leadership it has. The principal and deputy principal are both very nice men but are frequently absent from the school. In the case of the principal, he is there for an average of less than a day a week and the deputy for about three days. They were given a copy of my work plan but had apparently never read it – in any case, I was never introduced to either the staff or students and my role there was never formally made clear. This meant that I had to explain it to each person or group individually. Not surprisingly, the teachers (and kids) did not feel all that comfortable with a stranger coming in, without a clear mandate from the principal, to suggest that there might be better ways to teach and learn.

I have taught lessons for teachers and taught in the absence of teachers (and the deputy who teaches Form E English) but am not really getting anywhere. The standard teaching method is for the teachers to write something on the board (copied from a textbook or the government syllabus) and the kids write it down and memorize it. There is little thought given to what this might be. I came into a Form E class and there was something on the board about “…breathing chemical bonds by heating them”. The kids had all copied this down without thinking. I suggested that perhaps the ‘th’ in breathing should be replaced by a ‘k’ and I could see faces light up when they actually thought about it. An introductory computer class was being taught word processing by typing a passage on the blackboard with the errors that it included so that they could try the spell checker.

One of the Form E classes told me that they did not want me to teach them because they could not understand my accent (I spoke very slowly and clearly) and, more to the point, because I gave them too much work. I was teaching the probability unit (grade 9 in Ontario I think, but grade 12 here) and the kids were having huge difficulty with it. They prefer it when the teacher just copies the answers on the board so they get it in their books – even if they do not have a clue about how the questions can be done.

I have also discovered that the kids suffer from sleep deprivation. They seem to get from 5 to 6 hours and it means that they always falling asleep in class. I checked with a couple of the sponsored girls (in Form A and B) and they go to sleep at around 1030 and wake up at 340 to get ready for the day. They have to be out of the dorm rooms at 5 am to allow for cleaning and line up for breakfast at 6. They are supposed to be in class to study at 7 but they tend to sleep there for obvious reasons.

The Deputy Principal has just gotten a job as a principal about 40 km from Mamohau, so there is really no one there to lead. It will be interesting to see how much more the principal comes. I was told that the appointment of a deputy can take 1 to 2 years but that an acting appointment is likely.

Last weekend there was a very strange combined staff meeting and BBQ held about 40 km south of Maseru. Not sure why we had to travel so far from Mamohau for this, but it was on the grounds of a lodge that used to be the summer home of the British High Commissioner during colonial times. During the staff meeting, prizes were given to the teachers who had the highest passing rate during the Form C and E central exams. They also were asked to explain the reasons for their success (generally that they taught courses that had the highest marks across the country, but they did not say this of course). The teachers with the worst success rates (math and computers) had to explain what they would do differently this year – it had the feel of something from the Cultural Revolution, with self-criticism in order. The reality is that no schools do well in math and computer science. At Mamohau they stopped teaching physics because the math skills were so bad – and they are terrible, but it is a shame that kids who might be good at math/science are virtually eliminated from taking engineering, most science etc.

The principal also made his remarks about what had to improve and it was like he was reading from parts of the interim report I had given him. Unfortunately, he focused on teachers not missing so many days of school (a major problem for sure) – but hard for him to talk about (he said he was away, but ‘that there were good reasons for this’. He also said he wanted people to be on time at school and for each class and to stay in class until the end of the period. This was also problematic, since his wife, who teaches geography, is the worst offender here. Anyway, nothing has changed this week except that the teachers are pretty angry, but not showing it.

We had a visit for two days from Peggy and Peter, who are two of our volunteers. What they are doing is quite remarkable. They have been in Africa since November doing HIV/AIDS education. In that time they have been in Rwanda (apparently most of the women in the country were raped during the genocide, giving AIDS a big boost), Zimbabwe (one of the basket cases of Africa under Mugabe) and Lesotho. Peggy has been HIV+ for 20 years and Peter is HIV- negative and they can talk about the subject with great credibility and considerable knowledge on the subject. Many people here cannot believe that Peggy has been positive for so long since here getting infected has been a death sentence.

Lesotho has become one of the African leaders with respect to AIDS. Testing is free and available widely, including at the hospital near the school. For those who know this, my apologies – once you test positive, the next step is to have a monthly test to check your CD4 count. This is a measure of the health of the immune system. Generally it takes 5 or so years after infection for the count to drop to 200, which is when ARV treatment is needed. CD4 monitoring is free and the ARVs are technically free but there is a charge to transport them from Maseru. This means that the cost is R10 for three months – this is a bit less than $2. ARVs should have been available in Africa years ago (millions of lives could have been saved, but at least they are here now – at least in Lesotho, the story is not so good elsewhere I understand. Peggy and Peter were focusing on two messages – get tested and protect yourself.

I have been doing some follow-up with the teachers and students after these presentations. Only 2 (of 24) teachers have been tested and I have talked to several about their fears about being tested. One of the problems in the country is that huge numbers of teachers (and other community leaders) have died. This week I will also be working with the school’s AIDS club.

The seriousness of the problem can be seen from simple stats. In Lejone, near the school, the AIDS clinic did a workshop for 60 women. At the end of the workshop, 29 of the women were too frightened to be tested. Of the 31 who were tested, 29 were positive. More scary was that only 3 of these women have returned for CD4 testing.

Rains continue here, almost every day. Older people in the community are saying that they cannot remember such a rainy time in their lives. It really is a cruel joke after so many years of drought.

We set a new record for the 15 person taxis on the way here. It might have been the last taxi from Mamohau to Lejone (6 km or so) and it was pretty full when it stopped to pick up the 6 or so waiting. We managed 25 people including the two who were standing on the bumper holding on to the luggage rack. I was standing up with one foot in the door well and one between someone’s leg – the idea of personal space is not remotely the same here as in Canada. You are crammed into the taxi and could have someone’s arm around your shoulders or a hand on top of yours. You start to get used to it after while. The people here tend to fall into two categories with respect to personal hygiene. Most people are scrupulously clean – they often will have two sponge baths a day. A few people, the herd boys in particular, only seem to bathe in months that have a ‘V’ in them.

An interesting thought I had about South Africa …, they have benefited from the sanctions that were put in place during Apartheid. During this time they seemed to develop a great deal of economic self-sufficiency. Almost everything that you see for sale in Lesotho comes from there – for example, all manner of tools and foodstuffs. A particular favourite of mine was Da Vinci’s Genuine Scottish Shortbread. I imagine that globalization will gradually have an impact, but not much evidence of it so far.

Enough for now I think - except to say that the radio is on in the Internet cafe and it seems to be a combination of a phone-in show and Christmas music. This is the not the first time I have heard Silent Night in Feb here.