Daily Routines

I’m becoming more cognizant of daily routines here, mine and other peoples. The routines themselves and the way they change according to the season.

Until a few days ago, I always did dishes first thing in the morning. I would wake up to my 6:00 AM alarm, stretch, and squat over the dirty dish basin as the sun streamed in through the window. But now, it’s pitch black and COLD at 6 AM, and the last thing I want to do is leave my house to dump out the dish water before the sun rises. So I’ve begun to do the dishes when I return home from school instead, and now the first thing I do in the morning is turn on the heater.

Slowly but surely, I’ve begun to move slower as well, which means that my arrival time at school has slowly inched from 7:40 or 7:45, to 8 or 8:15. Which is the time that most of the other teachers were arriving all year round. As it’s gotten colder and darker, the teachers and the students have all been moving slower. Call it successful cultural integration.

Many things, though, are constants.

The rapid scurrying of the small black lizards through the school garden and up the walls, stopping once or twice for a nanosecond just to check the surroundings, then disappearing through a hole in the cement or under a leaf.

Seeing at least one of my male students chasing after the family sheep or goats after school, whistling and throwing rocks to keep them in line, while their sisters walk in groups to the tap to fill their water buckets, laughing loudly and gossiping.

The little children who live in one of the neighboring houses, greeting me every morning without fail with, “’’M’e Mpho! GOOD BYE!”.

The loud music, usually rap but sometimes nauseating pop music, that signal Tsepang’s return. I often hear the music before I actually see him.

The greetings as people pass each other on the road by my house, and the loud calls to people far ahead or behind (what I call the Basotho cell phone).

The crops and the activities depend on the season, but always there are bo-ntate (men) and bo-mme (women) headed to and from the fields, their children accompanying them on the weekends and during breaks from school. I’ve lived through almost a whole cycle of planting at this point: When I first got here in October, it was dry and windy and dusty, the maize and soy and sorghum fields that surrounded me dried to a crisp. Then it was planting time, followed by the rainy season, and all of a sudden the world was awash in greenery, like God had taken a giant paintbrush and made all the world new again. Now it’s harvest season, so everyone is reaping the benefits of their labor. I’m learning so much from living in an agricultural based society.

came home to my 'm'e doing this on my porch on thursday. It's HARD. 

And I always look at this map while I brush my teeth in the morning, dreaming about where I’ll go after Lesotho.

And because so many things remain the same day in and day out, season to season, I appreciate and relish in the moments of unpredictability.

Leaving my house for school and hearing my host sister singing loudly in her off-pitch and vaguely operatic voice.

Being given a handful of chewy candy by a beaming grade 1 girl upon my arrival to school in the morning, who I’m later informed is celebrating a birthday that day.

A text from one of my host sisters from my training village, telling me that she loves me, and that my presence is needed at the bar where she is enjoying a Castle Milk Stout with friends.

Tsepang knocking on my door in the morning and giving me a picture that he drew the previous night when he couldn’t sleep.

and then ya flip it

Khotso.