BROin out

One of the defining things about my Peace Corps experience has been the lack of certainty about the work I'm doing and how effective it really is. I'm clear that I'll probably never see the rewards of the most of what I do, and I just have to do the best I can and hope that some of the seeds I plant will grow after I leave.

But sometimes I'll have an experience like I did at the BRO camp that I co-organized last weekend, where suddenly I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm in the right place at the right time.

A little background:

Boys are great, and I think it's a damn shame how often they're left out of the gender equality equation, everywhere in the world. Nowadays there are a ton of programs to support and empower girls across Africa, but these things rarely have an equivalent for boys. How are they supposed to learn positive self-esteem, how to clearly communicate and have healthy relationships, to stay physically healthy, to protect themselves and their partners from HIV and to support and empower the women in their lives if no one teaches them how?

In Lesotho, boys in general are not trusted and largely blamed for problems like theft, regardless of evidence.

There is a huge drinking problem here, evidenced by the fact that there is a bar or homemade joala (alcohol) in EVERY village (but in some areas only one clinic for like five villages), around which drunk bo-ntate (men) gather.

From around the time that they start puberty, there is a very clear, invisible divide between girls and boys. This means they live together and go to school together, but in terms of their roles and social circles, they are almost entirely seperate.

Culturally, most adults will not talk about sex (the physical part of it, the emotional part, nothin). This is regardless of the fact that Lesotho, a country around the size of Maryland, is number 1 or 2 in the WORLD for HIV transmission.

So it's really no surprise that come adolescence:

most boys are aware of HIV as a thing and as problem, but not the ins and outs of how it works and what they can do to keep themselves and their partners safe.

They are very aware of alcohol but not the full ramifications of it.

They have never thought about their roles in society and in relationships as boys/soon-to-be-men (e.g. THE PATRIARCHY)

They generally think that they have the right to have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want.

...which is all really problematic.

So that's why Mackenzie, Ototo and I (DREAM TEAM SUPREME) had this camp, and it was incredible to see the boys create the safe space that they agreed on in the contract

, to see the counterparts facilitating and supporting them and to see what they all took away from the experience. It was without a doubt one of the peaks of my time here.

Morning stretch=morning fresh

Mack is a superior poster maker

Gotta dance 

snaps for condoms!

don't forget the ladiez

"So this is my bazooka..."

nothin' like a condom demo to engage the youth

Our amazing guest speakers from Jhpaigo, who came to talk about Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision. It cuts down on the rate of HIV transmission by 60%!

pretty gross

you're damn right I hugged every single boy at that graduation

The dream team! Hats off!

Khotso ya'll, and happy spring philly. The autumn equinox just happened here, and the breeze is becoming colder.

Love.

I had an experience with a person here recently that threw me for an emotional ride, and not the fun kind. I was hurt, angered and bewildered by what happened, and I spent a lot of emotional energy trying to figure out what was going on while getting very little in return.

Then, the other night, the drop of wisdom on my nightly yogi ginger tea bag said:

“Your greatest strength is love.”

And then it hit me, like it has at various times throughout this journey: The thing that I can always do, that will keep me alive and happy and well, is to keep an open heart. 

It’s easy to love the people who love us back, the ones who we feel affirmed, appreciated and respected by. It’s infinitely harder, and therefore worth it, to send love to those who hurt us or challenge us in some way. It doesn’t hurt anyone else for me to stay angry and allow those walls that we all put up sometimes to remain. It actually hurts me.

I want to be the happiest, most dynamic and alive human that I can be, and for me that means challenging those small and big moments that make me want to close up.

The only thing I can do is send love.

To my completely inadequate principal whose presence alone has the capacity to aggravate me.

To the always inquisitive children who I pass on my daily wanderings that ask the same five questions of me that every other person in Lesotho has already asked.

And yes, even to the boy who ghosted me.

The smartest thing I can do is let go. The most powerful thing I can do is send love.

And the funny thing, maybe even the best thing, about actively working on keeping an open heart, is that I’m also more aware of and in awe of the little gems that each day offers:

A shooting star in the early morning sky as I trod my way down the mountain for a morning run.

The boys on bikes, one red and one blue, who often pass me on the return leg of my runs, sitting erect and cool as cucumbers in their forest green school uniforms as the early morning breezes rush by them.

A package or letter sent by a loved one. They fill me up with home and always make my day.

One of my favorite grade 7 boys wearing a necklace of pink plastic beads in which the centerpiece is a small potato. “Is that a potato Rammako?” “Yes madam. It can be beautiful!” (I wish I’d gotten a photo).

The view(s). They never get old. 

hangin with this guy

Sending love. To everyone.  

Except Donald Trump.

Khotso.

New Year, New Things

So it’s a new year, my second and last year in Lesotho, and a few changes have gone down. Read on for a snapshot of Grace in Lesotho in 2016.

School

So I get back from Chistmas 

Jeff Duck

 Cape Town, and general relaxation mode, and began school on a low point, in a general funk about my purpose (another branch of the whatthefuckamIdoing here tree). But the only place to go when you’re down is up, and I’m feeling re-energized and sharp. I’m working hard with my standard 7’s, many of whom were supposed to repeat grade 6 but sort of moved themselves up with their friends, as well as with a few particular strugglers after school pretty much every day. I’ve got a solid co-teaching relationship with the class 7 teacher too, and that makes all the difference.

Once ‘M’e Eugenia and I start up Grassroot Soccer (scroll back for an earlier post about it if you haven’t read it) again after Easter break, I’ll be way more fulfilled at school. I’d rather talk about correct condom usage and healthy relationships than the ins and outs of the present perfect tense ANY DAY.

School is also way less fun without Lebo

The thing about Peace Corps (and probably other similar short term programs) is that I’m very aware of the end date, and very much focused on pushing myself to work my hardest and get the most out of my time here, now more than ever. I can’t quite believe that I’ll be home this time next year.

Home

It’s finally started to rain more, which means there was enough moisture in my shitty loam soil to replant my garden, and for the Basotho to sow their fields. Hopefully we’ll all get to harvest before the frost comes in June.

Went on a walk after a thunderstorm one day

All the better to wash your basin with

I’m also back on the running/work-out train after a long rest period in a boot while recovering from tendonitis in my foot, and I’m now joined most mornings that I run by one of my friends who teaches at the high school.

Lesotho

As of this week, three more people in my group have left Peace Corps, and two have left country. My group is shrinking by the month, for various reasons, and it makes me feel weird and sad.

I’m in the process of preparing for a BRO camp with the venerable Mack Rotherham on March 18^th-20th: a three day camp with sessions on self-esteem, gender, HIV, healthy relationships and all that good info/training that boys here (everywhere?) are so in need of. Super pumped!

I’m ALSO in the beginning stages of planning a week-long GLOW camp (same, but for girls) with some cool cats to be held in early October, about a month before I scoot on out of Lesotho.

the peaches are here!

The World

As in, plans are in the works to see more of it. You never know what life will throw at you, but if all goes according to plan then I’ll get to visit Swaziland (for Bushfire music festival), Namibia (during winter break) and Ethiopia, Ghana and Spain (after I finish here and before I come back to the states).

Shine on, ya’ll. Khotso.

Taxis: A World of Their Own

So you’re standing or sitting by the side of the road, or if you’re lucky enough, as I am, to have an actual bus shelter to sit under, you’re chillin’ there. It’s probably sunny outside, but maybe it’s rainy or breezy or cold. All around you, it’s serene. Cows, goats, donkeys and sheep make their perspective animal noises on their way to the fields as the herd boys grunt and occasionally throw stones at them to keep them in line, skinny dogs following closely behind. Birds are chirping, and once in awhile you wonder what particular bird is making that particular sound, or marvel at a new sound you hadn’t noticed before. People call to others from far away, and you watch the boys who sometimes use the bus shelter as their play area sit and play a game with stones. The world is doing what it does and you’re just happy to be a part of it, a witness to it all.

And then it comes. Sometimes slowly and steadily, like an old dog waking up from a good dream, and sometimes rapidly, barreling around the bends in the road, semi-rusted metal clanging and swishing through the breeze. 

Either way, your taxi is here. It’s a small mini-bus, sometimes brightly painted and sometimes plain white or silver, and it’s here to take you where you need to go.

Immediately upon ducking down to enter and, most days, greeting the other passengers, it’s clear that you’ve entered a world apart from the quiet one you just left. Most often, loud music assaults your senses as soon as you duck down to enter, serving as your welcome to this traveling state of affairs. On the good days it’s a repetitive South African house beat or even American pop and R&B from the nineties, but more often than not it’s famu, the national music of Lesotho. It consists of accordians and deep voiced bo-ntate (men) singing what I’ve learned is something of a life story in the space of a song. Some of it is okay, but on some tracks the singing is more yelling than anything, and recordings of babies crying and cows mooing blare over the music and yelling in the background, and it all sort of sounds like a chorus from hell. On Sundays it’s gospel.

I sometimes think how funny it would be if all new taxi drivers were in fact handed their own famu flash drives, because the more taxi’s I ride the more I notice how pretty much everyone across the country has the same songs blaring.

So you’re settled in your seat, which if you know what’s best for you is by a window. For reasons that I have yet to understand and maybe never will, Basotho generally do not like wind or fresh air blowing on the taxis. They would prefer to sit and sweat than feel cool air, and it’s pretty unbearable to be in there without an open window, particularly if you have a long way to go. Most people will oblige if you ask them to open the window just a hair, but grudgingly. Best to be the window operator yourself, if possible.

And then you sit and bear witness to any of the myriad things that may occur: Sometimes people will stare at you and sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they’ll take a friendly interest in you and start a conversation that by now you can say in Sesotho in your sleep about where you come from, why you’re here, where you’re going, and how Lesotho is treating you, and sometimes they won’t. My answers range in depth depending on my mood and the person asking, but when I am more generous with my answers I’ve had some interesting conversations with people. One time a chubby bespectacled man who looked to be in his early thirties, wearing a baby blue polar fleece GAP hoodie started talking to me, and I learned that he’s traveled to the U.S. and to Europe, that he has his PH.D and is working on his doctorate, all of which are highly unusual for a masotho.

I’ve seen boxes that are as tall as me, filled to the brim with loaves of bread, explode as the conductor pulled it off the taxi, sending bread raining down on everyone inside. I’ve seen conductors, most often skinny bo-ntate, play peek-a-boo with a passengers’ baby for the entire ride, in a heartwarming display of love for babies that I’ve noticed many men have here. Often, a real social butterfly, man or woman, will board and start a loud conversation with whoever they happen to sit next to, whether they know them or not, gesticulating hugely and starting a conversation that most everyone on the taxi is responding to and has become a part of in no time. I often simultaneously laugh and shake my head at the sheer amount of people and things that conductors will cram into one vehicle: Huge bags of rice and maize snacks (cheapo Cheetos) that people will re-bag to sell in their own villages. Crates of veggies and milk, suitcases and even animals. It’s kind of incredible.

At some point, the conductor will say “lefa”, or some equivalent that means it’s time to fork over your payment. People in the very back will pass their money to the people sitting in front to give to the conductor, and usually everyone is given their exact change before they get off. If not, the conductor has no change at that moment, and will run to the nearest shop or vendor when you exit to get your change from someone else. It’s no cause for worry when a vendor runs away with your money here; it only means they’re getting change.

It’s extremely likely that you’ll be squeezed in next to a very fat mme (woman) who will undoubtedly refuse to stand up to let you pass when it’s your stop. She will instead lift up her legs to rest on the seat, and lean over as much as possible, leaving a whole four inches for you to squeeze by to exit. You can try to argue or reason or explain that you’re not skinny, but she’s made her decision, and she’s not budging. So you squeeze by, thank the conductor, get off the taxi, and make your way into the world.

(This one goes out to the one and only Alex Wiles, with whom I’ve ridden many a bus, subway, el and trolley with, and with whom I talked to this week for the first time since coming here.)