Pict-ing

birthday papa! (my 'Me made me wheat papa.... mmmmmm)
the etosha pan is this miles-wide area of crazy jello-like mud that's too deep to walk in vic did a mudmask, i did warpaint, then we realized our faces were burning. i think that was the feeling of clean pores.

more ice cream! and balloons!
it's a reality. VIGILANCE!
a meteorite actually did fall, then we basked upon it
giraffes are not eaten because they are animals that are tall enough to talk to the gods, and to let you know if it'll rain soon. (ahh the age-old joke of "how's the weather up there?!")

zebras, as a species, are bad tempered because they have chronic bad gas (their stomachs can't fully digest their main food source) i ate them. they were not tasty. they can, however, have body temperatures of up to 45 degrees but their brains won't fry because of a network of veins across the skull, cooling the blood/their heads.
the hunnybadgers are hunngry
demons of the speed persuasion

'ell if rhi know!
wildebeest, and springbok i think
no caption necessary

becoming a part of the landscape

plummeting to their deaths
trench warfare
photo-ops in the one-horse town of Solitaire
african sunrise....

to sunset

trials and tribulations in the tumultuous dunes
quick, look like you're inside computer desktop picture yeah, we went there.

ice cream and alcohol! go indulgence!

social weaverbird nest, they get HUGE! until the tree falls down, a lot of the time. they also do this to powerline poles, which is funny looking.

I'm Missing the Olympics, and I'm not Sure if That Makes Me Sad or Not

apparently we lost in badmitton though. curses!

7 August

ugh, i'm failing at thinking of things to write about. I feel like i'm just talking to myself/the void on this blog, and i can't think of anything to say to the residents of a place that only marginally exists for me anymore, and i've given up on writing letters to people who never write back. If you want a letter, you have to write me. so there. I'm sick and tired of this place, but don't want to give up and go home either.

Well, update: school's started gain, school's started again, and this whole "double-shifting" thing (half the students come 7am-noon, other half noon-5pm, same teachers throughout) is not the doomsday event that everyone (including myself) made it out to be. I'm actually teaching less than before because all of teh students' classes have been cut back, and there's a new student teacher taking up the slack in the science dept. I've just gotten so lazy/stopped caring so it's hard to get the motivation to go to class. My students are sweethearts, though and it's really nice to see them again. I've lost a lot of my favorite kids though with the classes all getting switched around. i guess i can look at it as an opportunity for new favorites. and my classes are so so tiny now! it feels all empty in the classroom with only 35-40 kids in a class now instead of 55-60. maybe i'll actually learn everyone's names now.

Oh yeah! I'm a year older now than the last post. woo 24! My neighbor made a vat of sorghum moonshine and we sat around in the sun drinking, doing crosswords, and playing with puppies all day, then my 'Me made a big dinner. it was really nice.

So, Lesotho is maybe 95% Basotho, and 5% chinese. Europeans never came here because Lesotho has the virtue of having nothing to exploit, so the only white people here are from various NGOs/ Int'l aid programs. Anyway, there's REALLY bad racism/discrimination towards the chinese, they get shoved, insulted, spit on, etc. They can't enroll their kids in regular schools becasue they'll get harassed so badly. Some small children, having never seen white people i suppose, assume because i'm not black i must be chinese, so i get inappropriate racist slurs yelled at me by toddlers/kindergarten aged children. A couple times they've thrown rocks at me, but luckily since they are small they have no arm so i'm never close to being hit. stupid inept little kids. At least i'm not asian-american though, thouse volunteers get untold-of amounts of shit during their stay here. I haven't met a single mosotho who thinks it's wrong to hate, or at least dissapprove of, chinese people. I miss the diversity of the States. i've tried to tell people about how the races are all mixed up there, but they don't really believe me. I have a pictures of my grandma Betty, uncle Jim, cousin Paul, and Paul's son Isaac to show them how it's all the same family, but the offspring get progressively more asian looking with each generation. The people i show this to still look kind of dubious, like they doubt those people are really related. During a sex-ed session, amidst the questions about inter-species sex i had a few about inter-racial sex, like "if a mosotho cannot get a sheep pregnant, can he get a chinese or white person pregnant?". A lot of questions you never really foresee occuring in your life have been inquired of me here.

I have an exchange program going on in the staff room, where i teach my co-workers spanish and they help me with my sesotho. They think it's great, though they seem to only be using it as a means to flirt with each other. i've been asked to translate such useful phrases as "the teachers here are beautiful" "i love you" "do you love me" "come sit by the fire" "these men are strong" etc. I like it cuz it helps me remember my spanish. It's all mixed up with sesotho though in my head. i keep confusing myself.

well, i ended up saying a lot for not having anything to say.

When I was back in Nam...

Ok, sorry no pics just yet, for some reason this computer won't recognize my camera. stupid technology.

19 July

We just got to Etosha National Park, this campsite is incredible! There are 3 outdoor showers and toilets just for our site. they're a little voyeuristic with just thick mesh for walls. There are Hyrax (rock ferrets) running around outside, and on the way in there were all these giraffes just chillin by the side of the road!

Before this we stayed at this campsite with HUGE rocks and we all went bouldering for a few hours, it was so much fun. Man, i really miss bouldering. My jolly jolly thighs have seized up though and refuse to work today, which makes getting in and out of the truck difficult. i have to sort of fall out.

This morning we saw 600,000 year old cave paintings! they're soo cool! they're done with a mix of blood and yolk from ostrich eggs. Then victoria and i stood on a rock and shadow danced/fought for like an hour. we would've been there all day probably if our slave driver tour guide didn't make us leave. Man, we are funny funny people. We created what will be the next hit on youtube, if i'm ever able to upload it.

Before that i discovered my new obsession: QUAD BIKING. Holy crap! It has awakened my need for speed. we went for 1 hour in the afternoon on piddly 125cc automatic bikes, and it was waay too slow/short for me, so i cancelled my sandboarding excursion the next day and booked 90 minutes (all i could afford) and got a 250cc semi automatic (you have to weigh at least 80 kg to get teh 350 cc manual bikes, and though i have gained a lot of weight, i'm not that big). it still wasn't enough. i wanted to go all day. we "rollercoastered" on the dunes where you rocket up one side of a dune, do a sharp turn at teh top and plummet down again, i just gunned it the whole time, going higher and faster. (sidenote: the kalahari desert is BEAUTIFUL, it goes right to the ocean and the dunes are amazing) I impressed the guide with my skillz and daring.

Then before that we were in the huge red dunes of the Namib desert, we kept climbing up and rolling down them, the sand is so soft. I'd just sort of dive headfirst from the top of a dune and go into uncontrolled summersaults, until i fell sideways into uncontrolled log rolling. I permanently have sand in every orifice, i think some new ones were even created, and i severely messed up my neck from landing on my head so many times, but it was definitely worth it. We're enforcing the stereotype of Americans being loud obscene nutcases, but that's ok because we're having more fun than them. We really pretty much never stop laughing.

It's weird tho, because we're on an organized safari, everywhere we go we're just surrounded by tourists, it's like waiting in line at the parthenon, except i'm in friggin africa in this ginormous desert and everyone's concentrated in a few places. After Mongolia, Namibia is the least densely populated country in the world (1.8 million people, same as lesotho) so we've seen almost no actual namibians except in the big cities. i'm used to lesotho where there are villages scattered pretty evenly across the entire country, and no tourism to speak of. The back roads in teh middle of nowhere in this country are 100x nicer than the main f-ing road to the middle of lesotho where i live, and even the smaller backwater towns here are way nicer than Maseru (the capital). When i tell people i live in lesotho, it's a good way to garner pity/ lower prices while bartering. Lesotho is seen kind of as the armpit of Southern Africa. Whatever, at least we have pretty mountains, and nice people.

We (the tour group) are all on mefliquone, an antimalarial and it's giving everyone crazy dreams. Others are dreaming of being killed, shot, shooting others, general distress (or if you're madeline each dream ends in a party). I keep getting my heart broken, almost every dream it happens somehow. Everything's so vivid though, it's almost worth it.

27 July

Home again! I knew i was getting close when the sidewalks disappear, streets started being lined with trash and men start jeering at me. Good 'ol Lesotho. I can't wait to get back to my hut and sleep in my own bed and see Malehluoa and my 'Me again. I feel like i've been on vacation forever. day before yesterday (afternoon) we boarded the bus at Windhoek, then got to Bloemfontein 20 hours later, then an hour wait, then a 2 hour taxi to Maseru, where i spent the night last night, now it's 8:30 am and i'm waiting for the bus to leave here to get to thaba tseka, which will take about 6 hours. I've gotten really good at long car rides while living here.