Easter in Lesotho

I have to apologize that I have not posted a blog post in a while.  The thunderstorms here have been causing some issues with power generation and the internet.  The mail office block at Growing Nations. the conservation farming organization, was hit twice by lighting in February.   I am currently sitting on a porch listening to the the Messiah while it is raining and there is a thunderstorm up the valley.

The church here does not practice Easter the same way I am used to.  We had the normal church services from the liturgy all the way up until Good Friday.  Well it could have been up to Palm Sunday as I did not go to the local church last Sunday.  It is interesting to see how we practice church and the seasons of the church that I am so used to are not universal. And realizing that I wonder how much of the church activities we do are cultural and in turn wondering what church should look like.

The service yesterday was quite nice.  It looked like rain so people were slow to arrive.  I walked to church with my Nkhono, usually I walk by myself but I was afraid that I would be the only one there.  The people who were the first to arrive were all from my village of Ha Seliba (pronounced Sediba), and were all from my Nkhono's extended family.  We were joking that it was the Matli's church now.  People started to show up and we started the service.

The service consisted of people reading passages from the Passion of the Christ.  It would be intermixed with songs or verses of songs that related directly to those passages.  We all sat close together and it had a nice community feeling.  It was actually the first time that I had sat with somebody from my family at church, I usually sit with Abby and Kendelle instead. 

This Sunday for Easter the church is going to travel up the valley for a church at a different church.  The other church is still apart of the same denomination, but it is a church that is going through some struggles.  Lightening hit the church back in February and a local witchdoctor said that the lightening had laid eggs there and will come back and strike often.  This caused people at both the school and the church to avoid the area when there was a storm. Us going there will hopefully change some of the local people's opinion of the location.

Doing a Sermon

The Conservation farming organization that I was volunteer/working with over the last few weeks leads the last sunday of each month at the local church.  In January I did the sermon.  This meant that not only did I have to stand up and do the sermon I also had to sit at the front table in front of the whole church for 2 hours.  They use a liturgy so I used some of the readings that were done that day for the basis of my sermon.  These are my rough notes, when ever I speak I do not read word for word (So ignore any spell/grammar errors).

Bible readings: the church always do one from the New and Old Testament.  The story for the old testament was used both at my sending church service, and at the SALT orientation in Akron. Good thing I remember things like that

2 Kings 6: 18-23
Matthew 5: 43-48
 
Sermon:
The new commandment that was read today (in the liturgy); was about how we should love one another.  Who are the people that we should love; how do we show this love for others.   Jesus loved everybody not just his followers, should we love everybody as well.  How do live our lives to show that we follow the Prince of Peace.  I do not know the answers to these questions.  I looked to the bible for guidance on these questions.
 
To me Matthew 5: 43-48 teaches me who Jesus tells us to love.  Jesus says to love your enemies as well as your friends.  If we are only to love those who love us we are not better than people who do not believe in Jesus.  This passage challenges us to love the whole world and no just love our friends.  We should not be rewarded for doing what is easy.  What is easy is to love those who love us back.
The passage also shows how God loves everybody, and we should follow God's perfect example.  God lets the sun rise on all people whether they are good or bad.  He lets the rain fall on those who do what is right and those who do wrong.  We should follow God's perfect example and show love and compassion to everybody.  We should not judge who should receive our love and who should not.

I also found the story of Elisha and the army that was sent to kill him 2 King 6:18-23.  This is an example of how somebody who follows God showed love to his enemies.  He asked God to make all of the blind.  He brought the blind army to the king of Israel.  The king asked should I kill these men.  Elisha told him not to, they should prepare a feast for these people.  The country that sent the army no longer raided the country of Israel after a meal was given to their army.
The king of Israel showed love and compassion by giving the enemies of his country a meal.  This army did not show love to the people of Israel.  But the king of Israel did not take revenge on these people.  He showed them hospitality, made them comfortable and welcome.  Then he sent them home.  He treated the army the way he would like to be treated.

It is not always easy to follow the way that Jesus has set out for us.  To follow the ways of the Prince of Peace. To love your enemies is not something that is easy to do.  But if we are able to love one another.  And to show the rest of the world how we can love those who do not love us back.  We will show the love of God through us. People will know that we are Christians because of our love. We as Christians can be the light of the world.



I thought that I would have each line translated, but it was only at the end that it was summarized. I asked my host siblings if they understood the English and they said yes.  So that was nice.  And my Nkhono was so proud of me standing up and speaking in front of the whole church.   Most of the bible studies I have lead and the sermon have been focusing on the Sermon on the Mount.  I know that this section of the bible can challenge everybody no matter what they are doing.  It also provides the base line of many of my beliefs.

I have started working at the school this year.  It is very similar to last year.  There are two more MCCers working at the school for the school year.  It will be nice to maybe start a peace club for the kids at the school.  It will also be nice to have some people to bounce ideas off of.  And maybe in the next few months I will be able to get a new system of organization in place with graded books and information all in one place.  I would like the library to be organized in a way that teacher would find it easy to look for books and information.

Christmas Time and Birthdays in Lesotho

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.

School

The school year is coming to an end, the kids are doing their final tests and then on Friday the school year is over.  The reception (Kindergarten) kids have already finished for the year and are out for the summer.  The oldest class (grade 7) has been out for about a month because they had a national standardized test in the middle of October and are waiting for the results.  The results should becoming back in December. 

I have to admit that I have not tried to take photos of the school while the kids are there because I am afraid that there will be kids everywhere asking me to come and take photos of them.  I am already surrounded by kids wanting my attention even when I do not have a camera in my hands.  I did bring my camera to the class 7 graduation, so I took a few pictures before we went into the church.  It was crazy and kids did some funny poses.

The first of three photos taken while the camera was around my neck, I did that so I could get some funny photos

Second Photo: You can notice that the kids on the left started to move towards the center.  One of the kids wears a yellow bag like a cape every day, it holds his books instead of a regular backpack.

Third Photo: I just noticed when I was looking at them now that there is a girl who is in the center of each one of these photos.  I do not know how she does it but she did.  Abby is in the background she is also being mobbed as well.

So my days are usually fairly open and I have quite a bit of flexibility in what I do.  Some times it feels like I am not doing anything.  Though I do not really know what else I could or can do because the school year is winding down.  My days always started by going to the reception (kindergarten) and reading a book to them and having them repeat back to me the words.  This usually is a little bit hard at the beginning of the week, but after they have heard it for 5 days they are really good at following along.  Then I go to class one and read the same story to them, they usually catch on faster.  When I am done I say good bye, and they all start screaming.  It started one day when they were yelling and I just left, so they got into the tradition of just yelling every time that I leave.  

After reading to those classes I read to class 3 and 4 three times a week, usually around 10 in the morning.  I also read to class 5 twice a week and class 6 once a week.  It has taken me a while to figure out what books I should read and how I should read them.  The first little while I was basing them on books that I had read in North America to North American Kids.  Their English comprehension is not as high as in North America, it makes sense because it is their second language. In the last few weeks I was reading the same book to basically the whole school.  But I was reading it differently for each class.  For the younger classes I would just read the main words, for the middle classes I would read the whole sentence but change the words into those they could understand.  For the older classes I would read the book as written and then ask them harder questions about the story. I would like to read to them more next year and maybe try to get the kids who do not understand to read more. It is hard with those who do not understand because they do not understand English and me I do not understand SeSotho.

I started in the last few weeks having fun with how I read to the classes.  I found out that kids like to whisper back the story to you and it gets kids engaged again.  I also have been reading pretending that we are underwater.  They love that and they still say the words, at first they just made noise while moving their finger in front of their lips. Though they are less into it when their teacher is in the room, because I think they are afraid that they are playing and will get into trouble.

This is the library, it is a regular classroom that has a single book shelf of books that I lend out to kids and teachers to read.

After I am done reading to the classes I am in the library during their lunch break.  They can come and ask for a ball to play with or they can read books.  The attendance to read books in the library comes and goes.  Some times it is completely full, other times there is no body there.  I have been getting National Geographic magazines those have gotten a few more kids interested in reading at lunch time. 

When school ends on Friday I will start working at Growing Nations.  I am going to be landscaping and writing a plan of where the landscaping will be going.  What the priorities could be and in what order things could happen. So I will be using some of my university planning education to use here in Lesotho.

Birding Here in Lesotho

As many of you know, or can see on the right hand side of the blog, I really like birding. And yes I have seen lots of new bird species, there have only been a few species that are the same both here and in North America.  Mostly birds that have been introduced to both areas, House Sparrows and Pigeons.  All of the other ones have been new, and that is pretty awesome.  Barn swallows are one of the few species that naturally live in both southern Africa and North America. There are some birds who live at sea that live both in North America and the coast of Africa but I do not think I have a good chance of seeing them.  Same goes with the oceanic birds that I saw while I was visiting New Zealand, odds are they will be too far away from shore to see them.

The birds of Summer are starting to arrive.  The first one that I knew was a summer bird was the greater striped swallow.  We were finishing up a short hike to a nearby plateau, it took us 15-20 mins to get there.  We were sitting by the side of the river and a whole variety of swallows were flying by.  Then I was able to see the light rump of the swallow and when it got closer I could see what species it was.  It was really hard to take picture of it so I am sorry I do not have any.

I have also been getting my host family and neighbours interested in birds.  I have been asking for the SeSotho names of birds.  I am starting to learn some of them but others are quite hard.  I have also been lending my binoculars to them, but they mostly use them to see what their friends are doing from a long distance away.  They do like looking through my "Bird Dictionary", which I have out quite often. 

One evening last week as I was standing watching the sunset across the valley there was a weaver that I could not identify.  So I went and got my binoculars, my neighbour and I were looking through them trying to figure out what species it was.  Then I noticed not that far above me were two white birds flying.  I looked through the binoculars and saw their spoon bills.  Yup there were African Spoonbills in the Maphuts'eng valley.  They were only in the valley for around 20 mins.  We could see them fly down the valley then back up it for a while, then they flew out the same way that they entered.  It was crazy to see them in the valley as there is not really any suitable habitat for them.  They could have been in the valley because of the massive storm we had, it was quite the storm that lasted the whole afternoon.  There were so many swift species being pushed around by the wind before it hit.

 So a few nights ago there was some excitement in the chicken coop.  We got new chicks, at first there were 4 and then the cat got one so there were only three. They are dieing so fast my neighbour is going to give us a chicken because he has around 7. My host brother was a little bit sad that his chicks are dieing.  These are the chicks of the rooster that we ate a few weeks back.  The other rooster has to be kept on a leash in order for it not to try and hurt the hen or the chicken. It kind of has free range over the whole neighbourhood, when ever the leash is not tied to any thing.
But what was really exciting for me and my nkhono was a bird got stuck in the chicken coop. It was a Southern Masked-Weaver.  It was exciting for me because I got to get quite close to a weaver bird. My nkhono because we tried to get it out of there for quite a while. It would fly right past the open door and into the chicken wire on the other side of the coop.  I believe that it followed the other birds in to eat the chicken feed, mostly old papa.  And the other birds were smaller and were able to fly out through the chicken wire.  But this bird was just a little bit too big.  It also was able to get behind the reed screen that keeps out the wind and the wire. It was flopping around back there for quite a while. The next day I found a Southern Grey Sparrow in the chicken coop but it could fly out.  One side of the chicken coop has larger holes that it could get out of. 

Southern Masked-Weaver trying to get through the chicken wire

Weaver stuck between the reeds and the chicken wire

Birding has also been helpful in keeping my mind clear and helping me relax.  I find that when I am walking outside looking at birds I can not be stressed out.  I find that you have to have you mind clear and focus on exactly what you are looking at, so your mind can not stay focused on negative thoughts.  I have found it quite helpful on the few days that I have been stressed out to be distracted by the birds flying by as I go from one place to another. 
Though once I was listening to a conservation farming talk and there was a bird in the distance so I looked through my binoculars at it.  Not knowing that the whole group was about to turn my direction and look at the fields behind me.  I am sure that most of the people in the group instantly knew that I was not too interested in the different farming techniques that they were talking about. I now try to do it more subtly.

Food

I am writing this on Wednesday October 4^th, but I do not know when exactly I will be posting it.  The internet has gone down once again and I have no access to the outside world.  Including hearing about the strikes that are happening in South Africa, which have not effected us one bit.

I have had some questions about what types of food I have been eating since I got here.  Most meals have Papa, with is ground maize flour mixed with boiling water.  But I do want to mention the type of food I had yesterday because it was quite different.  My nkhono went to Maseru for a funeral over the weekend and when she got back she brought lots of goodies. 

I had the regular bread and tea breakfast at home.  Then when I was going to make lunch I found out that the group that is visiting here had leftovers.  So I had sloppy joes for lunch, with cheese, something that we do not get a lot here. 

Then when I got home my nkhono was there and we had apples, oranges, ‘pop corn’ like snack that was mostly air.  Then I went with my host brother to pick up the rest of her stuff at the road side and when I go back we had KFC chicken.  Yup she had brought the family KFC for us to eat.  Then once we were done that then we had Makanyas, doughnuts. 

Then we had dinner which was chicken, papa, and gravy.  Gravy here is tomatoes and onions cooked with sugar and salt.  But we had green onions added as well.  It was wonderful.

Usually I have bread and tea for breakfast.  Then I am served ‘brunch’ at school.  Usually it is something with papa; I like the meals made at home a little bit more.  Then when I get home I get served another meal, usually with bread and tea.  Then we have dinner that is usually papa, moroho and gravy or eggs. 

Moroho, Papa and Eggs

How to Make Papa:

Get the water boiling, add ground maize, the stir a few times until it is done.  

Moroho:

Get greens from your garden, or from near your garden.  Then cut them up finely.  Then put some oil, not too much, and the cut greens into a pot and let them cook down.  Add quite a bit of salt and maybe BBQ seasoning and you are set. 

BaSotho gravy:

3 Tomatoes, half an onion, oil, teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar.  Cook onions in oil first, then add tomatoes, salt and sugar.  Cook until the tomatoes have dissolved.  

Weather and Some More Photos

 The weather here is quite amazing and very varied.  One day it will be warm and sunny then the next there will be tons of wind and thunderstorms coming through, then the next will be really cold.  Other days I will be wearing long johns while I am at school in the class, then on the way home just wearing a t-shirt and paint I am sweating.  I know that thinking/talking about the weather is not something many people around here do, but I just wanted to share some of my thoughts about it.  I was also able to include a few pretty pictures of the area I am staying.

A thunderstorm in the distance at sunset

 There have been quite a few thunderstorms that would hit us during the night.  At first I was not able to sleep at all during the storms.  Now when the storms hit I wake up for the close lighting hits but sleep through the rest.  The big reason why I could not sleep through the storms is the sound of rain hitting the tin roofs.  I had to once put a pillow over my head so it was not as loud. One day I thought it was really raining and I put on all of my rain gear, got outside and it was barely spitting.  My host family just laughed at me, they do that quite a bit. Quite a few of the thunderstorms that hit have had hail, and that is really loud inside the buildings.  I had to stop reading in one of my classes because the hail was so loud that I could not even hear myself talking. And this is the winter, apparently these storms are nothing compared to the summer time.

Clouds from a distance thunderstorm

 The thunderstorms here also have huge anvils, that start to block out the sun an hour or more before the storm hits. So you know that a storm is going to hit and adjust your schedule.  Yesterday school got out early because many of the kids (and teachers) have to cross water courses to get home.  Many of them become impassible the hour after the rain has fallen.  There is a mostly dry creak bed between my house and the school and when it fills up nobody can cross it, but when it is not raining you do not really have to even cross on rocks it is so low.  (I should take pictures of the differences some time). 

Clouds at sunset

When there are thunderstorms in the evening, or even rain storms, there are really beautiful moments where the sun breaks through the clouds.   The house that I am staying in is up on a crest of a hill so it allows me to see both the sunrises and sunsets.  I have noticed that the clouds are really beautiful here, somebody said that the clouds are lower because we are higher up in elevation.  That might be why I think they are so beautiful but I do not know.

Rainbow view from the front porch

 I have found when the thunderstorms come through, at least the ones that have come so far, there are rainbows that are quite easy to see.  The picture above the sun is hitting the far side of the valley but where my house is the rain is still falling.  I was once outside and looked up and it was clear, and had been for a while and it was still raining.  I was trying to decide if it was okay to bring out my laundry to hang up and all of my host family was making fun of me.

Dust storms

The wind here is quite strong.  It makes the roof sound like it is taking off.  My host family makes fun of how I always mention how loud the wind can be.  Yesterday when I was going home from school it looked like there was a huge rain storm coming.  It turned out to be a little bit of rain and a whole ton of dust. The wind was so strong that it tore a roof off of a chicken barn and pushed over an outhouse in town.  The dust was so thick that you could not see any of the mountains that surround the valley.  It even was able to put a layer of dust on the inside of my room, even though there were no windows open.

Sunrise after a night of storms

This week has been an interesting week:
Their is an conservation farming conference this week and I have been taking part in it as much as I can when school is not happening.
There has been a field trip to a dam where all of the teachers went on the trip causing school to be cancelled for all of the students who did not go.
The day after the field trip most of the teachers did not show up because they got back at 3 in the morning and there were 300 kids will little to no supervision.

I also updated my background picture, it is now a view of the valley looking towards my home and the school that I work at.  And the mountains that are behind it