Blag No More

As tempting as it is to continue to blag about my snafu-ridden reassimilation to american culture, the purpose for this blag is through. I'll update one more time when i get a cell phone to advertise my number.

Those of you who kept up with me, thank you.

Those of you who actually got off your sorry asses and wrote me letters, or at least emails, THANK YOU, you helped me to survive these past couple years. Your new task is to call/text/email me now that i'm here so we can have a real-life relationship!

Love you all,

Goodbye FOREVER

Rebecca Reilly: Stoic in Paisley

It's been requested that I write a 'farewell' post, summing up my experience here, saying goodbye, etc.

I can't do it.

These past two years aren't some seperate segment of my life that i can just 'sum up'. It's my life, and this is my home, and i do love it here. There's too much to think about, and i'm all spazzed out right now anyway with all these peace corps exit procedures and tests and saying goodbye to all my family and friends and neighbors and home and school etc etc etc. People keep requesting adages and bon mots and specific emotions from me. I have wrapped my feelings and thoughts about this up in a ball and hid it waay down in my psyche somewhere, and maybe i'll let them out nervous breakdown style when i'm safely back in the spare room at mom and dad's house in California.

I am very happy to leave, there is nothing more I can do here in Lesotho. I'm probably aiding them by departing because overzealous international aid is one of this country's biggest problems. That said, I've loved, learned, grown, done all sorts of cheesy things, in more ways than I can say, or know. I'm beyond happy that i was able to have this experience, and i will leave you with some pictures of my 'hood.

With my principal in my NEW TRACK SUIT!! it's the most amazing thing ever. Everything's funnier when wearing a tracksuit.

At the farewell my school did for me, some students did the gumboot dance, i think they call it 'stomp'ing or something like that in America, they stomp and beat the sides of their gumboots in cool dancy rhythms, started by the diamond mine workers in south africa. Anyway, they're wearing the mining outfit, and the one in front is the 'foreman', wearing a terrifying hand-knitted boss-man mask. The dance was SO COOL

Walking to school with some form D students

With friends

My host brother gifting me with a traditional basotho blanket to take home, it's so warm and pretty. As you can see, i'm super excited about this. also, please note: the dress i'm wearing I sewed myself with fabric from mozambique!

boo-tee-full

races

that scooped-out looking mountain behind the burned ruin is the one we call 'brokeback'

the view from my stoop

F- This List, I'd Rather Play Some Whist!

Things I've Lied About Recently
1. Being sick
2. Having important paperwork/appointments/etc. outside of school
3. How the car got scratched
4. My nationality (Russian)
5. How much money I have
6. Why I am leaving Thaba-Tseka so soon
7. My formative years spent at a boarding school in Germany
8. My familial relationship with Kelly Clarkson
9. What I think of my coworker's new weave


Things I've Stared at for Far Too Long
1. My ceiling
2. Brokeback mountain
3. The bit of stained glass hanging from my wardrobe
4. Raw meat
5. Crossword puzzles
6. Sheep
7. The growth behind the taxi driver's ear
8. My fingernails
9. Cliffsides
10. Cinderblocks
11. Blank pages
12. Car wrecks
13. Dirt paths
14. The surface of my desk
15. Clouds


P.S. I would like to announce that I am NO LONGER A RESIDENT OF THABA-TSEKA!!!!!
As of now I am enjoying the bright lights of the big city, then as of November 2 I will no longer be a volunteer, then as of November 11 I will no longer exist on the continent of Africa

COS conference party pics

the Thaba-Tseka girls (linds, vic, mad, me)

uh oh face

cardboard chris conz, who met his untimely death later that evening

George Washington's Wooden Teeth Feature Strongly

15 Sept.
This past weekend there was a life skills day camp for 20 high schoolers which I had little to no part in helping, except for organizing food. Anyway I sat in on a session. It was agree/disagree scenarios and one of them caused particular strife for me. It was “a woman who carries a condom in her purse/pocket is ‘easy’” we (the PCVs) had just started to convince the kids that it was ok because she is looking out for her personal interests because of the ‘provider’ class (people aged 18-50, anyone able to work and provide for their family) 50% are HIV positive. ONE OUT OF TWO, holy hell. Anyway these bitch mediators from Catholic Relief Services went off about how condoms are bad, abstinence is the only solution, and even had the kids do an abstinence chant. These people are annihilating themselves and it’s hypocritical women like these that are making the problem so.much.worse. These kids are so lost and confused, half the people are telling them condoms are bad, and the other half are handing them out like candy.
It makes me feel so angry and hopeless! I like to pretend I’m doing some amount of work in the positive direction while I’m here, but instances like these make me re-realize that nothing I’m doing here will stick without local support, which is dubious at best. It’s exhausting and depressing and I’m tired and my spirit’s broken, so I’m quietly, guiltily sneaking back to my cushy carpeted insulated house complete with refrigerator and amenities, etc. in America.
Everyone (almost) that I’ve met here thinks that because I’m foreign/white/etc., I have some magical ability (in the form of money, candy, or other) to make their lives ok. I obviously do not possess this trait and so everyone around me is constantly/consistently disappointed in me, no matter what I accomplish, which admittedly hasn’t been a lot. After 2 YEARS of working on simple skills (adding and subtracting whole numbers), my students still don’t know it. I can’t get through to them; they will not/ cannot conceptualize anything. If it isn’t memorizable, they won’t ‘learn’ it. The weight of this has also contributed to the Breaking of Rebecca’s Spirit.
I came here so smug, thinking ‘I don’t expect to change or ‘help’ anything here anymore than I do by teaching in America, so therefore I can’t be disappointed when the inevitable happens and I do not, in fact, do much. But then I got here and this became my home and it’s dying. Not slowly or metaphorically but this country is in fact collapsing at an incredible rate and how can anyone sit back and watch this happen? I want so badly for this place to be at least OK, at least still in existence after 2040. I have this optimism and hope all inside me that won’t go away no matter how much I try to be logical and look at things realistically. And I want to believe even me, just as one person, can do something besides tell my students about George Washington’s wooden teeth for hours on end. People helping people. Maybe some student that actually listened to more of what I said than my nonsensical stories will go on to make a change, to do something good.

Things I’m Not Into, Lately
1. Shingles
2. Multiple food babies at one time from going for seconds/thirds at the boofay
3. Glitter in my eyeball
4. My students getting hard-ons when I’m trying to explain ‘combining like terms’ to them
5. The new science teacher doesn’t go to class, so the kids all complain to me.
6. I’ve had a cough/sore throat for 6 weeks
7. Listening to that R. Kelly ‘Believe’ song on repeat for 6 HOURS in the staff room because that’s all a coworker has on his cell phone, and Basotho seem to be immune to getting tired of repetition, song-wise
8. Flying rocks/debris hitting me when I walk home through the almost constant windstorms
9. Wearing a skirt without tights in windy weather around my students


Things I’m Into, Lately
1. My ‘me lent me some sheets! No more bare mattress
2. Tuna pasta
3. Carrot burgers
4. My close-of-service date was approved! Nov. 2: outta here
5. I’m getting cash in lieu of a plane ticket home and Peace Corps only uses American carriers, so if I buy my own ticket I save about 800USD! Cape Town, here I come!
6. My teaching experience here qualifies me for a teaching credential in California
7. Cutting my hair. I really want it to grow out, but whenever I’m bored in my hut I can’t help grabbing some scissors
8. Cuddling with the three remaining puppies, the professor, and parker
9. I ate insane amounts of cheese from the boofay
10. I finally made a playlist of all my very favourite songs, it makes me so happy! Every song is amazing, one after another!
11. Any movie featuring Robert Downey Jr. - I love him
12. “Imagination grill cheeses”- I butter and grill bread, and when I eat it I pretend there’s melty delicious cheese on it
13. Shouting punk rock lyrics/ the Lesotho national anthem into the wind when I walk home
14. Wearing sleeves, shades, and a scarf over my head/face (because of the wind) and a) pretending I’m riding in a convertible or b) seeing if people think I’m an albino and therefore leave me alone
15. Doing tai-chi with my overstressed students to calm/centre them

Future Vacation Highlights
1. Highest (commercial) bungee jump in the world! 710 feet, I’MA DO IT
2. Ghetto wine tour (includes sneaking into the backyard of a vineyard to drink wine from the bottle)
3. Dancing like a Fly Girl circa 1992
4. Hot Stone Massage
5. Buying fun boots and pretty dresses
6. Eating weird bush animals from MamaAfrica in Cape Town
7. Plundering the touristy craft stalls for local art
8. Gawking into N. Mandela’s former jail cell
9. Getting myself on a one-way San Diego bound plane

rock out....

General Updates
1. There are 5 puppies who think i am their mother because the professor abandoned them
2. While being super cute, they smell really bad (like dead sheep) and whine a lot
3. all my sheets and towels were lost during a transportation snafu, so now i sleep on a bare mattress with just blankets (i feel like a college boy)
4. i love chocolate much more than i ever have before
5. i've cried in public 7 times in the last month
6. My immune system no longer exists, i have multiple viruses attacking my body at all times
7. Thanks for the birthday wishes, gramma and uncle jim!
8. My principal continues to view me as free labor to exploit as much as possible before i leave
9. teenagers' BO smells really funky
10. spring is coming!
11. there was a 3 hour assembly at school informing the students about swine flu and advising them to be vigilant
12. Parker came home! after 4 months she reappeared, heavily pregnant. woo small fuzzy animals!
13. There's graffiti on the back of a road sign in TT that's supposed to say "all people like sex" but the paint on the s dripped, so it looks like it says "all people like bex" and this makes me smile to myself
14. I JUST FINISHED MY COS (close of service) CONFERENCE!

MOçAMBIQUE, M'Lady

finally! some mystery illnesses and now the known illness of shingles is causing my blog-related apathy. actually it's causing a more general malaise, which is reaching its apathetic little fingers into all corners of my life.

hopefully my immune system is more robust than victoria's grandmother's, who had shingles for 10 YEARS. ugh that sounds awful.

anyways, where did i leave off?

Moçimboa de Praia

1. They speak portugues in moçambique. it's weird, and also a lot of fun to say "hola!" in africa and people respond!

2. luckily my spanish came back to me surprisingly quickly, and i picked up the differences between spanish and portugues pretty quickly, so i was able to understand people! and to speak to them! in whole conversations (kind of)!

3. i can't remember if i included this in the last post, because technically it's a Tanzania event, when people found out we were american, they would get this really concerned look on their face, put their hand on our arm, and intone "i'm SO sorry for your loss". we were really confused, and asked "what loss?" "michael jackson, of course!"

so for the rest of my life, when someone asks where i was when michael jackson died, i can say Dar Es Salaam

4. The bus pulled up to our guesthouse-thang at 3:30am and the conductor was shouting PEMBAPEMBA PEMBA like it was an air-raid or something, we flipped out and ran to the bus thinking we'd miss it, and then ended up circling the town for another 2 hours, we passed our guesthouse like 5 more times. stupid.

5. On this very same bus, after we had been on the road for a couple hours (on the bus for about 4 hours), this awful smell permeated the bus, so i covered my nose with my scarf, and then finally it reached up to the driver, who pulled over to the side of the road, and everyone rushed off the bus. we were so confused as to what was happening. a baby at the back had exploded! vomit and diarrhea were shooting out of all orifices of this baby, it was so gross! so we all stood around on the side of the road while a couple people wiped up the bus, and one woman walked around holding the baby by one arm while it spewed its innards.

Later that trip, we were really hungry and had no money, so were trying to barter half a jar of peanut butter for a couple bread rolls through the window of the bus. The small child selling bread was not agreeing to our suggestion but we kept haggling until the bus driver took our peanut butter away and just bought us two rolls. for that we were infinitely grateful. Thank you, busdriver!

Pemba

1. This little beach town had many an unfriendly expat. not much tourism, but the hostel where we stayed had a big screen tv with MTV music videos playing nonstop! we were completely entranced. also there were girly magazines from 2006, so we watched tv and read old fashion tips for the whole day. other looked at us like "ew, stupid americans travel around africa and only want to watch mtv" but we bore their judgements well. we did not care.

2. There was some ngo called "elephant human relations aid", and we kept seeing them on our trip, first in mtwara/mikindani, then again in pemba! the logo on their car was like the sistine chapel with adam and god almost touching, except it was a person's hand, and an elephant's trunk. we mocked them a lot, mostly because we were bitter that they kept seeing us and not offering us a ride.

3. savannah is a delicious cider sold around africa, and here they put lime in it!! the difference is life changing! it's like corona vs. corona w/ lime (in terms of taste difference)

4. There was a traditional dance show for the tourists, and we neglected to go over to watch it. as an excuse, madeline said "my life is an african dance."

which is absolutely true. our lives are an african dance.

Ilha de Moçambique

1. Our taxi never showed up to bring us to the bus, so we hitched from pemba to the ilha. Thusly a 5 hour trip became 10 hours, and we spend probably 2 1/2 times as much money. curses! but we did not die, and still have all our limbs; both of which are things to be happy about.

The ilha de moçambique is the former capital of moçambique, from when it was controlled by the portuguese. Now it's been mostly abandoned, and is a surreal ghost town neverland sort of place full of big beautiful whitewashed spanish style buildings with all these plazas and statues and gazebos and wide treelined cobbled walkways, except they're mostly abandoned and crumbling apart, with figs (banyans) growing in and through the walls, and the whole island is overrun with street children.

3. when we arrived at the ilha, a bunch of small boys (7-10 years old) surrounded us and were saying "my name is (breakfast, juck chuck, go, etc) i will be your wife i make good kissing, don't go to your hotel, come stay at my house, i don't work i will just pleasure you all day" etc etc. Street kids harassing us is not new, but a child prostitution ring is unusual, to say the least. The kids were following us around and becoming really annoying, so vic says, "where's freddy mercury?!", whips out the painting she bought in its cardboard tube and starts whacking the kids with it. They dispersed quickly after that.

4. The hospital is (was) this huge grandiose 3 building structure that takes up a whole block, the walls and ceilings are crumbled through, with trees growing in the buildings. It's still in use, and the patients were waiting beneath the boughs of the trees to be called into the doctor.

Also there's a crazy woman living in the maternity ward, she just sits in the corner smoking cigarettes backwards. The hospital workers chase her out periodically, but she just comes back in.
below is a pic of the front of the hospital buildings

5. Cher is EVERYWHERE. almost every place i've been to in africa has played cher at least once. also while at the bar where we heard cher, a toddler ran past our table carrying a butcher knife almost as tall as she was.

6. Seafood sellers wander around the town with their catch of brightly colored fish on a line in one hand, and a scale and knife in the other. people will stop them, they'll hack off a section of fish and weigh it right in front of you.

7. We were trying to buy bread, and the woman at the market was out, so we followed a small child through the streets, into a doorway, through a tunnel lined with other small children, and out into a secret courtyard, with other doorways leading to other tunnels and courtyards, and stairways leading up to the "second stories", which, due to the lack of ceilings, were like rooftop balconies. There was no bread back there either, but this whole other city, apart from the streets and building fronts, was incredible.

8. The one atm on the ille was not functioning, and we were out of money. we managed to spend very little while we were there, and the mistress of our guesthouse was the most awesome woman i've ever met, and was driving out to the nearest big city (Nampula, 4ish hours away) so she both gave us a ride, and dropped us at an atm to get money out and pay her!

Nampula-Beira= NOTHING

Vilankulous
1. Finally, we arrived in a place with other tourists! (this shouldn't be exciting, but it was. we wanted to meet some other fun people)

the other tourists we met were very awesome, two of which we ended up travelling with for the rest of our trip.

2. i got to snorkel and it was a lot of fun. there were lots of fish, but they weren't very exciting. boo.

3. we sailed on a dhow, which was SUPER COOL. see a couple posts ago for a photo of a dhow.

4. other miscellania: a) goldfish is a very good south african band, and b) beaver canoe is a questionably named chain of restaurants in zimbabwe.

Tofo

1. awesome waves to bodysurf

2. a continuance of the awesome beaches

3. fun beach parties with all sorts of other people we met. being peace corps is like a fun club, whenever we meet other volunteers we hang out.

4. we drank a lot of local rum called "tipo tinto" and talked like pirates

5. we spent a lot of money to go on a whale shark tour, and there were NO WHALE SHARKS. stupid jerks.

here's our new band photo:Then to maputo (moz's capital), then to johannesberg, then bloemfontein, then maseru, then finally homehomehome to thaba-tseka.

Thank You Madeline's Camera

These pictures go in reverse order, just to keep you on your toes

The man in red with the pole is the one who ROBBED US. he even looks devious....

truckin' on the chobe river

mikindani

Hey, i'm MIckey, and i'm Danni! welcome to our hostel

goodbye zanzibar

i love america

thinking about life

good morning, nungwe!

Things white people like: henna and elaborately woven palm frond accessories!

The dorian fruit: the bane of my existence.

why yes, i will quaff from your coconut, pepe le peau

and next we will see boy climb coconut tree, then sample some fruits, then the tour will be finished

This flower by my finger grows into a nut larger than my head, which then creates CHOCOLATE

This man is the spice nazi, vic's face shows our general reactions to him yelling at us.

we are eating something tasty. i think cinnamon bark

One Step At A Time

I made a list of vacation highlights, but have been informed that my lists are rather nonsensical, and highly uniformative. So for this past vacation i will compromise by making an annotated list. also, my camera was stolen, so this blag will be visually impaired for the rest of its tenure. unless i borrow pics from someone else, which is moderately likely.

HIGHLIGHTS

Zanzibar: Nungwe
(this was a beach town on the northern tip of the island)
1. turqoise waters (they were perfect! better than a computer desktop picture! and the water was so warm and clear and perfect. the ocean began approx. 10 ft past the door to our room)
2. we walked past this group of about 20 women on the beach one morning, wrapped from head to toe in beautiful colored fabric, all with cooking-pots no their heads like johnny appleseed, and they were smashing these octupi repeately into these rocks, to tenderize them i guess.
3. the air was like syrup there, it was so thick and humid and oxygenated! i'm used to the rarified air of lesotho. i had to spend some time gasping, like i couldn't fit this substance into my lungs
4. there were all these dhows (a style of wooden fishing boat) in the water, and one of them was called the For-Tuna and mad and i thought the pun involved in that name for a fishing boat was pretty much the best ever. then the fortuna sank while we watched, the proprietor was desperately trying to bail it out, to no avail. not very fortunate.
5. We went on a tour of a spice farm, and saw how a ton of different spices are grown, and ate many an odd fruit, our tour guide-type guy was a little intimidating, he was like the soup nazi but for spices. he'd hand us something and ask us what it was, and if we got it wrong he'd yell and say we were banished or soemthing. we'd get really nervous and just shout out like 5 spices and never commit to one answer out of fear. we got to see a boy climb a 50 ft tall coconut tree like nobody's business, and rambotrons are my new favourite fruit!

6. there was a bar on the beach, and at one point i dropped our room key in the sand (at night) and so mad and i were trying to find it without accidentally burying it, and this one girl next to us was like, oh hey i have a light, and then OSAMA BIN LADEN's face is staring at me from the sand! i found the keys quickly, and turned to find the origin of this miracle, and it was a lighter, with a little flashlight on the other end with osama's face projected out! so i traded my normal lighter for hers, and now i am the proud owner of osamaaaa. apparently these lighters are 'everywhere'. i looked and found some saddam hussein ones at a market, and i've heard tell of some obama and beyonce ones as well. i love capitalism, as long as it gives rise to things like this.

Zanzibar: Stone Town
1. A little known fact about Freddy Mercury, of the rock and roll band 'Queen'. he was born and spent the first 5 years of his life in zanzibar! we saw his house. and bought some mercury-themed souveneirs. and victoria bought an amazing canvas of a painting of freddy, that says 'we will rockyou stone town zanzibar' off the wall of some shop. we also had a lot of fodder for 'mercury-poisoning' themed puns.

2. there are mosquitos EVERYWHERE. and they all eat me. i was vic and mad's de facto mosquito net because they would all just bite me, and no one else. the mosquito nets on the beds are fun though, i felt like i was sleeping in a gauzy bubble.

3. i love chapattis

4. i love kangas (the traditional fabric) women wrapped in these are so so beautiful. i did not buy them. why? because i'm a idiot and need things to regret, i suppose.

5. seeing a small monkey drinking out of a straw out of a coconut while sitting in a rich woman's lap at a fancy restaurant. i guess they are like teh chihuahuas of zanzibar...

6. Top Chef Beachside: there's this nighttime seafood market in stone town, with all these stands with fresh fish on kebabs and chapattis and fried morsels of unknown wonder, and all the people are dressed in chef hats and jackets. delicious.

7. getting to watch indian boy band music videos on the ferry from zanzibar to dar es salaam


Dar Es Salaam
1. we managed to try to get our visas for moz on mozambiquan independence day, when all embassies were closed, poo! then the next day we went back and they had run out of the little stickers to put in the passport. they said we'd have to wait a couple weeks til they get in, so vic took our passports back to zanzibar, and used the full extent of her persuasive powers to get visas put in for each of us, all in one day! the mug shots we took for this are priceless, and hopefully will eventually make it onto this blag.

2. dar is a dirty yucky city. not enjoyable. but we did find a subway! it was creepily exactly like subway in america...

3. men selling water on the streets inexplicably make this incredible obnoxious kissy noise to advertise their wares

4. Dar and Zanzibar are both predominantly muslim places, so there was what seemed like a constant call to prayer being issued from the mosque loudspeakers, it's beautiful.

5. we stayed at the YMCA in dar, and got locked in, and so had to make a great escape by climbing over a wall and down a fence at like 3:30 in the morning

6. We rode this death trap bus with no shocks to speak of for 12 hours from dar all the way to mtwara, near the moz border, going like 120 km/hr over speed bumps and along incredibly bumpy dirt roads with everyone screaming and flying out of their seats, with the horn playing this fun arabian jig-tune all the while

Mikindani
1. So, they speak Swahili in Tanzania, and we were getting by ok with our stock phrases, and we thought we heard this one guy say something like "cashew" to us in greeting (kay-sho (or something) means tomorrow, but that also didn't make sense in the context) so we decided to adopt it. The next person to pass us on the path was an old man on a bicycle and we cheerily called out to him, habari! cashew! to which he shook his fist at us and exclaimed while riding off "YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE SWAHILI LAANNGUAAGE!"

2. I love baobabs

3. When baobabs are fruiting they look like christmas ornaments

4. i ate a baobab fruit. it was not very good.

5. We were supposed to get picked up by a rickshaw at 4 am to catch our bus in the next town over which left at 5 am, and it never showed up. at 4.30 we got a call from the driver saying "there is something wrong with my bah jah jee" i thought it sounded like a personal problem, but evidently this is what he called his rickshaw. So the man called his friend to come get us, and at 5.15 this little motorized rickshaw zooms past us, skids to a halt while making a 180 degree turn, and the guy shouts for us to get in.
So we hustled in, with our packs and squished into the little seat, and the man was off! He was crazy! and evidently really wanted to get us to our bus on time, it was like mr. toads wild ride, but waay scarier because it was real. we zoomed over this pitted dirt road through palm trees at breakneck speed flying out of our seats holding on for dear life, laughing because what else can you do if you're about to die? and then we got there and the bus was gone, but we found an old man with a pickup truck from 1796 that looked like it had been totalled and brought back to life at least 5 times, and he was driving to the border. the passenger door was not on hinges, and had no handle, it had to be removed entirely from the car for us to get in, and then wedged back into place after us. This man also had a need for speed, and the road to the moz border was also very crazy, 4 or so hours later, we're all dumped off at the shore of this river.
We agreed on a price for the crossing (2000 Tanzanian shillings, or 50 Metacais), and were hustled into a very leaky canoe with 6 other men, plus 2 polers, and one guy whose job was to continually bail out water during our passage. it was so beautiful! we basked in our surroundings, happy that things were going our way. the river is very wide and fraught with sand bars, so we meandered around and through them, and about halfway across the river the bail-out guy asked us for the money, so we gave him the amount we had agreed upon, and he said no no no that's not enough, and that the price was 50,000 shillings. we laughed at him and said that 2 was all he'd get, whereupon the man started to get angry, and demanded 50,000 Tsh from each of us, and we patiently explained that we do not have that much money, and even if we did we would not be giving it to him. He had stopped bailing out water during this whole exchange, and the water was up to my ankles, and all the other men in the boat were ganging up on us also, and we were all yelling and they wouldn't take us back to tanzania, or onward to mozambique without getting all our money. in non-hidden cash we had 60,000 Tsh total, and so they took all that, and finally poled us on to the other side of the river, where we were tossed onto the back of this truck with 20 other people and a crapton of luggage, and we miserably rode on for another 4 hours or so to Mocimboa de Praia, and the truck driver again tried to overcharge us and wouldn't accept what we gave him, and finally we had to just walk away from the man, we were so exhausted and sad and beaten down. we had no more money, and were so so tired of being cheated and harassed. This trip wore down my spirit considerably. The baobabs, however, made everything ok. I couldn't help but smile every time i saw one

Stay Tuned for The Rest Of Mozambique!

I'm Not Going To Cook It But I'll Order It From ZANZIBAR!

So, not only is Zanzibar a restaurant from a Tenacious D song, it is also an island of near-mythical beauty and wonder off the coast of Tanzania! I will be flying there (after much grief with my credit/debit cards. curse you and your fickleness, wells fargo!) on saturday, and 2 friends and I will spend some time relaxing on snow-white beaches, basking in turquoise waters, and wandering amidst the 17th century muslim sultanate "stone town"!

After that we will be making our way south along the coast of mozambique, frolicking through the jungle, playing catch with my new pet hippo, traversing rivers in dugout canoes, buying 1,000 kangas (awesome fabric swaths), consuming half the marine life from the coastal waters, dancing where appropriate, etc. etc.

I am SO EXCITED.

also, for you enjoyment, some photos from my life, recently:

The dog, is, after much speculation, PREGNANT! look, i'm poking a puppy fetus!

I did kind of want to sleep, but instead had to spend the day curing the hiv, one dirty dish at a time (there was a free testing day, and we helped with the catering) (that's my mom standing next to me!)


Lastly, a rare glimpse of the elusive headless-skinless tree sheep, captured right outside my hut!

A Duality to Defy Diana

HAPPINESS

1. cheese

2. tea
3. the professor
4. victoria (s) [both of them make my life sweet]
5. the tasty things vic bakes for me
6. cookie dough
7. my students
8. both of my families
9. thinking of grad school
10. i got a man!
11. altering/decorating my old shirts/dresses so that they ROCK
12. the new neko case album
13. lotses is sending me his old ipod! (<3)
14. dreaming of mozambique
15. pumpkin fries
16. pumpkin bread
17. moonshine
18. haruki murakami
19. my new coat
20. i may only have 4 more months in this country!
21. not teaching classes during my winter break

SADNESS

1. Parkinsons has been gone for 2 months, i keep expecting to see someone wearing her (people here have an affinity for making daniel-boone style hats out of house cats)
2. i didn't get to teach for a full mon-fri week ONCE this quarter because of classes being cancelled for various stupid reasons
3. silence
4. 'radio lesotho' -- the only radio station i get here is mostly fuzzy call in shows and the horrific native music called famu
5. doing laundry in subzero water
6. looking like the little brother in "a christmas story" when i go to bed each night because it's SO COLD
7. being a pariah
8. i may have 6 more months to get through
9. i have no good books to read
10. tuna went from 12 maluti per can to 20 maluti per can (from luxury item to unaffordable)
11. people in USA don't seem to be receiving any of the mail i'm sending
12. the professor isn't pregnant, she's just a slut.
13. my students are completely incapable of problem solving.

FUNDRAISING!

SO, on a different note.

Victoria and I are trying to get an assembly hall-lunch room-library-study area building put up at my high school. My school is only 4 years old, but we're fast becoming one of the best in the nation, the teachers and students are all so dedicated, and they work so hard, i really think a lot of these students will go on to do something great with their lives.

Because my school is so new, they have very little in terms of resources. The entire school consists of 9 classrooms, some outdoor latrines, a lab (with almost no actual lab materials), and a building with a staff room and principal's/secretary's offices. They have to have daily assembly outside, which is really unfortunate in summer because it's always raining, and in winter because it's freezing cold and very windy. They have nowhere to sit and eat lunch, and I'm organizing a library, so about 1000 books will arrive next may, with nowhere to be stored or read. Also fofr the standardized tests they have every year, there is nowhere for the students to take the exams. This building will be great for all of these things (Assembly hall, library, study space, exam hall, lunchroom, etc). An estimate and a sketch are going to be made up soon, which i will post.

The idea was put to me by my host family, my "mom" is chairman of the school board, and her oldest daughter owns a contracting company, and they are very motivated to organize everything, we are getting windows and doors donated, and we will hold fundraisers in town, BUT, this building will cost about $20,000 US, which is waaay more than these villagers that live on 2,400 USD a year can raise. So soon i will begin fundraising in earnest, but for a heads up, anyone who was interested in sponsoring a child (which is still an option) may want to divert their funds to the Hall! A website is being set up that you will be able to donate directly to.

I realize America/ the world is in some sort of "recession" and whatnot, but as poor as you guys feel, you are still incredibly unimaginably rich compared to my students, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. And this hall will last a long time, and make such a HUGE difference to these kids.

Please tap into your sense of compassion, forego eating out or candy or something superfluous for a little while, and instead give the money to these wonderful kids who have all the odds in the world stacked up against them.

Wah- waah (sad face)

So.... my ipod spontaneously combusted. literally (kind of). i was listening to it in my speakers no prob, and it paused for no reason, so i turned it off, but it was frozen, which happens plenty so i did the magic reset thing. and when it reset it insisted i plug into itunes before it can be normal again. so i plug into itunes, and itunes sez i must "restore" it. which means EVERYTHING will be deleted.

So i get scared, and take it to the IT specialist in the office in the capital. and he uses his linux system to look at it, and it says there are only 1.16 GB of corrupted music. There should have been 60 GB music, 4 GB pictures, and like 10GB of movies....

So i get real sad, have 2 whole beers with lunch, and decide i will restore it. But my ipod decided to get all sassy and won't let any computer restore or reformat or anything! It won't let me move on! So IT specialist has it again for the day. i think he is intrigued by this.

I am just real sad. I'd think, a lot of times while on the bus or travelling around, what if my stuff was stolen, what would i miss the most? it's my ipod. ok. but, i am putting it in a box. i will not dwell.

Other than that, i'm too lazy to tell you the story of the 3 week old cous cous. it's a good one though. In general, i feel like everything is just same old same old, and so i just can't get inspired to write an actual blog post. hence all the photos and lists.

People who are writing me letters are getting good stories in return though. well, good stories is interpretable, they're getting random stories from day to day life. Maybe if you write me a letter (even writing an email, then printing and mailing it to me works well), i will tell you fun stories!


love you all

The Mystery of the 3 Week Old CousCous

Easter, Shmeister. Put it in Your Keister!

Goals for Easter Vacay 2009

1. Climb to the highest point in an area
2. bathe in a waterfall
3. build a badass sandcastle
4. hammock joust
5. find monkeys
A. befriend a monkey
a. trade headband for very powerful ring with said monkey
a.1. convince said monkey to wear said headband
6. Madeline needs to buy jellies and a floppy hat
* Please note: Rebecca would also like a floppy hat



10 Things to Quicken My Heart [Easter]

10. Backflips in the waves
9. midnight full moon shark infested waters of the indian ocean skinny dipping
8. building drip sandcastles
7. drinking with friends
6. sangria
5. foliage
4. cuddling
3. making fires and sitting by them
2. hammocks
1. Brett the helper -- with headband



Highlights [Easter]

1. See previous list
2. food poisoning twice in two weeks (doh!)
3. meeting a former employee of Jaime Oliver
4. burning myself 3 1/2 times on various hot substances/objects
5. Dreaming of a chuck-e-cheese shipwreck
6. Sitting on a couch with jack/brett/mad watching the foliage for 5 hours
7. Creepy assholes harassing/molesting me in my sleep (3 times) (triple doh!)
8. My hair= a fro the whole week
9. Wearing dresses that end above my knees
10. Minimal sunburnage
11. Buying purple tights
12. Road trip with best playlist evar
13. Harassing the attractive bartender into having a dance party, then being unable to attend
14. Not getting eaten by sharks
15. 3 giant friendly dogs adopted us for the day! (we named them jellybean, fetch, and lamp)
16. pineapples (with rum, sometimes)
17. monkeys of indeterminate species
18. untended cows that go for a jaunt to the beach to sunbathe and wade in the shallows

I Can't Imagine Anything Higher Than This

Beaches + Monkeys + Hammocks = Happy Rebecca

and also these cows that like to go on outings to the beach

The Questionable Inner Workings of Youth Today

Questions I've Received Lately
1. What did you eat for breakfast
2. Can i see a person with HIV and AIDS
3. Who is the new president
4. If i have sex with 5 boys in one day, will i get sick or pregnant
5. If i have sex with 5 boys unprepared, will i get sick or pregnant
6. If i have one baby that is 12 months, can i make another
7. Are there people on other planets
8. What do these words mean: admire, fortune, conflict, fakalakabusted
9. When is maths club
10. How old are you/ How many are you in your family
11. Is Eminem your father
12. Is Rihanna your cousin
13. Where are China, Japan, and Brazil
14. What is osmosis
15. If my period is only 3 days do i have a problem
16. By the time you want to be married you should tell me
17. What can i do to make the labia grow longer what is the function of the labia what happens if they are too long
18. What if Mugabe can say he wants to marry you will you agree
19. Are there poor people in America
20. Do you have cows in America
21. If i want to marry the American, what can i do
22. Madam at Ha Matala (a village) at Maseru (district) there was a man who rape the pig why do that man do that to the pig when there are many prostitutes
23. If there are pimples on my genitals do i have a problem
24. If i make unprotected sex with my boyfriend and he tells me a week later that he is HIV positive, will i have HIV
25. How do i factorise
26. Am i at high risk if i make abortion/ will it be wrong if i can make abortion
27. Is oral sex nice? What is it?
28. Madam my brother says he will marry you he is very handsome so what if you can say o.k.

Things I Wonder About
1. Why bees always hang around the pit of my latrine so i'm scared to sit down because they'll sting my butt
2. If kitty AIDS is as prevalent as human AIDS and will parker get it because she's a cat-slut
3. If the real GRE is as easy as the practice problems in my "Cracking the GRE" book
4. If Michelle Obama is dead. A student today asked if she was because they heard she was in a fatal car accident. [Note: it was Zimbabwe's PM's wife who died]
5. If my class discussions about sex, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS are actually helping/educating my students at all
6. Have I become a glorified condom machine?
7. If my new haircut makes me look butch (almost nobody at school noticed, because here everyone's hair is fake and changes dramatically every month or so, so they don't realize it's a big deal for a whitey to lose that much hair)
8. A student gave me a cob of corn in class today. Is this the Lesotho equivalent of giving the teacher an apple?

Madam, You Look So Sharp!

My skool won a debate (topic: should HIV testing be compulsory in Lesotho) and so the next week friday we had no classes and there was a DJ and we made a crap ton of samp (corn based porridgy dish that's SO tasty) and the teachers had to dress in the student uniform, and the students got to dress in private clothes, it was so cute, these kids dressed to the nines. anyway, on with the photos:

The "hip hop boys"

all the ladiez in the kitchen

woo hoo first day of skool!

The Great Shearing

Before:

The first cut

notice the cow in the background trying to eat my head

Almost there.... Taking a break to menace said cowDone!