Time for Me to Update

Hello everyone!

I started writing this two weeks ago and never finished...here it is anyways...

Wes has done all of the posts lately, so I thought I would add something too. We are still doing well. We are in Maseru today and were able to get some AMAZING pizza at a local Italian restaurant. I never liked pizza much at home, but now I am so excited to get it.

As promised, I will talk about my site visit week before last. It was wonderful! The volunteer I visited lives in a beautiful valley. She works at a local clinic with a support group and at a primary school teaching teachers life skills. I was really impressed with the clinic. They had a large supply of medications, and were very organized. I was surprised to learn that they have a high immunization rate among the children that they serve, and that they provide family planning services. For 5 rand (less than a US dollar) you can buy a medical book to keep all of your records. Once you have that, you can go to any clinic and get any prescription needed for free. This includes all ARV therapy for HIV as well. These services are subsidized through the government, FBO's, and NGO's.

Karolina (who I visited) lives in a nice rondaval with on her host family's property. The second day I was there we climbed to mountain behind her house (something I never thought I would do!). It was beautiful!! Hopefully I will be able to post pictures soon.

This past week we also visited a pediatric HIV and AIDS clinic run by Baylor. It was amazing! It was really awesome to see the work that they are able to do here with the children and their families. Lesotho has the 3rd (sometimes 2nd) highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world, and its ravaging effects are everywhere. We will write a post soon (hopefully) discussing HIV and AIDS more directly.

We just finished our 5th week of training. I can't believe that we have been here for that long. It is no longer strange to us that we live in Africa. Things that used to seem so bizarre to us now seem so commonplace (using pit latrines, pee buckets, hand washing clothes, cows blocking the road on the way to school, animal noises waking us up at all hours of the night, living by candlelight after about 6pm, etc). Today we were walking to the shop in our village and 20 or so sheep went barreling by us. It didn't even strike me as odd. Lol...I guess I didn't expect to adjust so quickly.

We are really close to the other volunteers in our village. They have become our second family. It will be hard in a month when we are all split up to go to our separate villages. However, I am sure that we will make sure to keep in touch.

We should be getting the packet with all of the possible site placements tomorrow. Everyone is VERY excited! We know that we have been very spoiled living in the training village. Every Saturday we have been taken to Maseru where we are allowed to spend the day shopping, using the internet, seeing movies, etc. You can get pretty much anything you want in Maseru from KFC to new release movies to sushi to great grocery stores. However, once we go to our sites, it is likely that we will not have quite the selection of goods and entertainment, so we are taking advantage of it now!

The pace of life is very slow here, and I enjoy that very much. Even though we are busy in training most of the day, we have plenty of time at night to read, drink tea, cook, and hang out. The training center in Maseru has a library with a ton of books. I have read Stolen Lives about a family who was jailed in Morocco for 20 years and the Lovely Bones. Both were very good!

That's where I left off a couple of weeks ago. We are now halfway through week 7. We should find out at the end of the week where our permanent site will be. We are pretty sure that we will be in one of the southern districts called Qacha's Nek. It is in the highlands, so we will have cold winters, but our house will most likely have running water and electricity. Wes wanted the highlands and I wanted electricity, so it works out for both of us. Once we know our actual job, I will make sure that we update again. Nothing else has really changed. We are both still doing well. I have definitely become a much better cook! I have learned to make all sorts of breads and tortillas from scratch. We are eating very well right now while we can still get a good grocery selection from Maseru. It will probably not be this way once we get to site.

We would really like to hear from people! Let us know what is going on with you, how things are at home, etc. You can send us facebook messages or emails. My email is blacorte02@yahoo.com and Wes' is weshelm@gmail.com.

At some point I will post a wish list of things that we would love to have in care packages. Right now we are doing well, but I am sure that we will be missing some things once we get to site.

Thank you to everyone that has been praying for us and Wes' family during this hard time. It has been hard for Wes to not be with his family, but we know that we are where we need to be and that Gran is at home with Jesus.

Brandi