I am testing out sending an email to my blog instead of actually writing the blog on the blog website. We are trying to reduce the amount of bandwidth that we are using. I also will most likely not be posting pictures for a little while. Hopefully this will work.
Christmas: Christmas was a little bit crazy in the Rampopi household to say the least. So we were to get a chicken on Christmas Eve, but that never happened for what ever reason, so we were to go on Christmas morning. Then we woke up and it was raining, my Nkhono said "go made it rain, no church, no chicken, go back to bed". So I went back to bed thinking that we were not really going to have a very big Christmas.
Then the rain stopped an hour before church was to start so we all had to get out of bed because church was going to happen. I got to church 15 mins late and there was one lady and her grandson there. So I went to the Growing Nations, which is a 2 min walk from the church, to read for a while. Then church started around 11 am as usual, not at 10. Then we were lead to believe that the church service was going to be really long, but it was not bad at all. It was the usual length with
child baptisms, conformation and communion.
Then I went home and all of the neighbourhood kids were showing off their new clothes. Then they all went to play and I was home alone for around an hour. My Nkhono was visiting other people on Christmas. When she got home we butchered the chicken that was hanging out under a wheelbarrow in our living/dinning room. We plucked it in the kitchen, and it made the whole house smell quite bad.
For Christmas dinner we had chicken, rice and tomato sauce. It was simple but nice. I have to say that was the first Christmas I have had quite like that.
Boxing day: We went visiting the relatives on the other side of the village. One grandmother's house had blown off so we went to see that and all of her relatives that came and visited.There were quite a few and they were all surprised that I spoke a little Sesotho and lived with the Rampopis. I hung out with a teenager from Cape Town, who had very good English; he knows 4 languages and he is just going into high school. It was interesting to hear him talk about what he likes to do and what he does not like. There was a little boy there who only spoke Xhosa, and got really mad at everybody because he could not understand anything that was being said. Apparently he had been mad the whole time that he has been there, a few days because he could not understand anything. We did become kind of friends even though we could not understand each other.
The next day Abby, Kendelle and I took some time away from the village and went to Ramabanta, and stayed at the Lodge in town. We went to see the
Semonkong Falls. They were really nice. I had a bad cold and climbing back up from the base was a little bit hard. I had to take lots of breaks. (I had a cold, it was at high altitude and I have asthma). We had a really nice shepherd boy who was kind, relaxed and did not beg for anything. It was very surprising and nice to have a guide that was so polite.
Birthday: My birthday was just last week and since I was not feeling one hundred percent I did not want anything to big to happen. Abby and Kendelle, the other MCCers here in Lesotho, made cookies for me. They were wonderful. It was a complete surprise and absolutely wonderful. When I woke up in the morning my Nkhono sang happy birthday to me before I even greeted here. It was kind of a shock because I had forgotten that it was my birthday, and had just gotten up so was kind of in a daze.
Then when I got to the project I was sung to again and then they were making fun of my age. Mostly because people around here do not really know my age and assume that I am much older than I actually am. Like this week I was asked "do your kids know how to swim".
Then when I got home I just wanted to take a nap but did not want to have to excuse myself from any activities they had planned for me. When I walked through the door my host brother was asleep on a mat on the floor and my host sister was asleep in her room. This was wonderful because it allowed me also to go and rest for a little bit. Dinner was not that special or large. My host sister did not eat because she felt sick and was asleep; the rest of us did not really eat that much and gave our food to the neighbour boys who were visiting.
It was an extremely relaxed birthday but the type of birthday that I love.
My chicken: apparently either for Christmas or my Birthday I got a chicken. It is all black and the other chickens do not like it so it has to be stored in the cooking hut rather than chicken coop. It also sometimes tries to run home to our neighbour's rooster. One time that it ran away I helped bring it back and the rooster from inside the chicken coop was trying to look really big. I made myself look even bigger and scared the rooster. Everybody laughed at me.
So I know this is my chicken because it is called Sechaba. I also know it is my chicken because I am to bring it back to North America with me. My Nkhono told me one day that I should take the chicken with me when I go. She told me that when I am in the airplane I should butcher and pluck the chicken so when I get there I can start cooking right away. But I can only do this after I have taken a few of the eggs or chicks that it has laid and cook them to eat. She did the actions of the whole story so that she made sure that I understood. Which made the whole thing even funnier. She has a funny sense of humour some times.
School: I found out for sure that school is starting on the 28th of January. I went to church on New Years Day and found out that school was going to be 2 weeks later than it was scheduled. Apparently the reason for school being moved back is that the new curriculum is finally ready. The teachers are to be trained on the curriculum in just two weeks and then start teaching it right away. I hope the training goes well and the the new curriculum is good. It also works perfectly as there are two MCCers who are coming to work in the school and they will arrive the first week of school instead of the 3rd.
