Living in Lesotho: October 2015

The Dustbowl, or, Lessons Learned from Weather

The dust is everywhere: In my nostrils and eyes and ears and in between my toes. It gets under my door and into my house, making it seem as if I didn’t thoroughly clean the house the week before I left for South Africa. The wind blows as if a storm is coming, yet it’s not raining nearly as frequently or as hard as we would all like and need. Frequently, lightning will light up the sky beyond while only a drizzle or nothing at all falls from the sky. It’s as if the rest of the world wants to storm, but the skies just won’t allow it.

Yesterday and today it finally stormed, and already my skin doesn’t feel as dry.

This is how the weather was when I came to Lesotho a year ago, and while most things about living here don’t surprise me anymore, the dramatics of the weather here almost always astound me. The sun beats down and makes me squint my eyes and think of New Mexican summers visiting the fam. The wind blows so strongly that from a distance it looks like the dust is a low hanging cloud ready to release drops at any moment, but when walking in the midst of it forces you to cover your eyes so the particles don’t get in and make them burn like hell. Most days begin awash in bright, fresh light. Most of them end in awe-inspiring multi-colored sunsets that quickly give way to a sky blanketed in stars. The sky always makes me feel delightfully, refreshingly, small and insignificant.

The weather here is like an outdoor traveling theater troupe, ready to strike and surprise and mystify at any moment.

I wonder what it is exactly that makes me feel so exposed to the elements here. Though it’s significantly more humid in Philly, there are definitely four seasons the same as here, with extremely cold days and boiling hot ones and days full of fresh breeze and rain and wind. Was it the concrete that shielded me before? The tall buildings? The indoor plumbing? The fans and the air conditioners and the indoor heating systems? Probably all of it.

It’s new for me, this intimate awareness of the land and the weather. It’s teaching me things too-how the clouds look different when rain is really coming and when they’re just putting on a mask, trying to fool you. How to adjust my daily habits based on the outside world: I didn’t do dishes in the morning in the winter because it was too cold to go outside that early to dump the dishwater on my garden. How much I took water for granted at home.

By now, I’m used to thinking about how to ration my resources on a daily basis-baking less bread and cooking less soup uses less gas, and water that gets used for one thing is almost always reused or simultaneously used for another: washing my hands over my dish basin allows me to soak the dirty dishes in one go, and dirty dish water immediately goes towards watering my (ailing) garden. These things don’t feel very difficult anymore, they just are what they are.

But sometimes, I’ll wake up from a dream where all I did was sit in front of the washing machine while it washed my clothes for me, turned on a faucet anywhere and just watched water come gushing out and cooked a meal without thinking once about how much gas I was using and when I would need to replace the tank next.

Life will be easier in a year, no doubt about it. And I’ll appreciate modern amenities more than ever.

I only hope I don’t end up taking them for granted.

Khotso.

It's been a year, ya'll.

A Year in the Mountain Kingdom

Well, I’ve been here a year. If I were a baby I would be eating solid food, crawling around eagerly, babbling away in my own language and starting to learn to walk (can you tell I worked in a pre-school?).

I’ve imagined how I would feel around this time throughout my first few months here, made predictions for what I would be dealing with and made lists of personal and professional goals that I hoped to achieve by this marker.

The irony, of course, is that I hardly remember any of them. I realized months ago that very few noticeable changes can be made in a year of teaching, so I probably threw those lists away. And most of the personal goals I made (50 pushups? No thanks) have dissipated as well. As with all things worth our time, the most profound lessons learned and changes within me and in my school are things that I never actively pursued, but that found me instead. Here are a few of them:

1. I don’t rush, ever. I used to get to places early on the regular, and nearly always left my house when I planned to. I remember having days where I did like six different things, often in different parts of the city. Thinking about that now makes me cringe and laugh. Call it what you will- settling in, cultural adjustment or just realizing that taking the time to enjoy and fully experience whatever I happen to be doing makes me happier and, ironically, makes the time pass more quickly.

2. I’m realistic. It takes time to understand just how long new things take to sink in. I started the year planning to cover two topics in one week because there are so many things my students could possibly be tested on and so little they understood (and no, the people who teach the concepts don’t create the exams. What an idea!) Now I’m better at the balancing act of teaching to the test and teaching for comprehension. If I had come to the Peace Corps with plans for doing all kinds of projects or believing that my presence would make a truly PROFOUND difference, I would probably be pretty down (who was it that said the thing about expectations being disappointments waiting to happen?) As it is, I’m just more realistic, and always figuring out ways to do what I do better.

3. Happiness is a choice. It’s a hard concept to get, because we are used to basing our happiness on outside circumstances. It’s also a hard one to embody, but being here has totally affirmed this truth for me. I wake up every morning and choose to be happy, which means that I let go of hard things more easily and am able to be more present with whatever is going on. It’s not about what’s on the outside-my skin has become worse, I’ve gained a little weight and I’m certainly not my cleanest. My clothes are usually dirty and they are all falling apart, little by little. All this, and I’m happier in a deeper and more profound way than I’ve ever been.

4. Life happens. Lots of sad and hard and wonderful things have happened to people I love while I’ve been here, thousands of miles away with only a small screen to take it in from. Weddings and deaths and accidents and new jobs and new boyfriends and girlfriends and racist police brutality. Coming to the year mark has made me feel more self-confident and assured than ever, but also to feel farther away than ever from the people I hold dear. It’s a good reminder that life happens no matter where in the world we happen to be. Control is an illusion.

5. It’s the little things. I notice and appreciate the small gifts that life gives every day, now more than ever: Realizing that a particular student is so much more confident and outspoken than she was at the beginning of the year, a new plant in my garden pushing it’s head up through the dirt, a letter in the mail (seriously, it’s like Christmas every time), a short conversation with someone in my village, spontaneous singing with my teachers, “beat-boxing” in the school office with one of my grade six boys, a cool breeze after a day of pure heat, talking to my grade six girls about the importance of self respect while sitting in the sun. There are a lot of hard things about being here, but if I focused on those I'd probably be depressed. I’d rather soak up the quirky, spontaneous, beautiful things that Lesotho imparts on me every day. After all, I only have a year left!

All love from Lesotho-see you next December!

At which time, I'll appreciate getting to consume my favorites more than ever.

first blueberries in a year!

Mama Jude's visit!

During my spring break from school, and for the week after, I was lucky enough to have Mama Jude come visit me.

We spent the first week traveling along the Eastern Cape of South Africa, which was startlingly lush and green compared to the brown dust of Lesotho as of late. We saw animals, beautiful beaches, and stayed in beautiful hotels (although these days, a working shower is pretty much all it takes to impress me). This was also the site of the violent Xhosa wars, in which the Xhosa people had their land forcibly stolen from them, and it was intense passing these dazzling green farms where the black South Africans go to work for the white ones, the same as it's been for centuries, regardless of Apartheid being abolished. Seeing farmers walking to and from their work in the fields is a sight I'm very used to in Lesotho. The difference is, of course, that they're working for themselves, on their own land. The feeling is lighter.

Scroll down for BEAUTY.