Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Leaving CBT, Swearing In, and Qacha's Nek

A lot has happened since we last updated. The last few weeks have been extremely busy. Most importantly, all of us have officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers, and we are spread about the country at our individual sites!

All of our language tests, practical presentations, and exams are done. Our class scored well above the average, most likely due to the extra time we had in our training villages relative to previous groups. I scored Intermediate High and Brandi scored Intermediate Mid (though she had a harder tester than I did). We had three guys pull off Advanced Low, which is incredible.

On Sunday, August 8th, we had a ceremony with our bo-me and the chief, along with the Country Director of Peace Corps and her husband. The other two training villages had similar ceremonies. We were wished well and were able to thank the village, and then proceeded to a large feast the bo-me prepared. We gave our gift to our families, said good-bye, and boarded the bus for Maseru. It was difficult to leave what we had grown to know as home during these past two months.

We spent the next few days in Maseru getting ready to go to site. On Monday and Tuesday before swearing in, we attended a supervisor and counterpart workshop and met our supervisor for the first time. Our supervisor and counterparts are the host country nationals we will be working with at our post. For two days we discussed the ins and outs of working with a Peace Corps Volunteer and what our different roles would be in terms of work, housing, communication, and all the other facets of a working relationship across cultures.

On Wednesday, August 11th, we put on our Sunday best and headed to the Ambassador’s house for swearing in. Television crews and journalists were there to cover the event, along with our supervisors, some current volunteers, our trainers, and the Peace Corps staff. It was great to finally swear in after two months of training. Our three Advanced Low guys gave great speeches in Sesotho, and we received congratulations from the US Ambassador, the Minister of Health, and many other people, both Basotho and American. It was a really great day.

After swearing in, most people headed straight to their sites. Due to the distance to Qacha’s Nek, we had to wait until the next morning. We met our supervisor early in the morning and crammed all our things into his Hi-Lux and hit the road, passing about a billion students lining the road to the airport to wait for President Zuma from South Africa to arrive. After passing through Mafeteng, Mohales Hoek, and Quthing, we finally arrived at our new home in Ha Qacha’s Nek.

Our town is situated on the Senqu River, and our compound overlooks the river valley. Like the rest of Qacha’s Nek, our town is all high mountains and deep gorges, with striking scenery at a scale we aren’t used to seeing in flat Texas. The road there is littered with car-crushing boulders, big and small, that have fallen from the mountains and cliffs overhead, reminding you that you are never all-the-way safe here.

Our town is what would be called peri-urban here. It is a small town, but it has two many shops and facilities to really be called a village. We have three large (for Lesotho, think small Walgreens) well-stocked shops (one Chinese, one Indian, and one Basotho), along with both a primary and secondary school. The town has electricity provided by large petrol generators, but they shut off at night and from 10:00 – 12:00. The generators ran out of fuel yesterday as well, and we here it can sometimes be months before more arrives. Fortunately, our compound has a backup generator, so we at least get around four hours of power at night. We also have running water, with the caveat being that it doesn’t run. We got a little water (enough to fill our toilet tank, but not enough pressure to reach the taps) last night, but that is all we have seen. The water infrastructure is very old and cannot handle the strain of the growing population here.

Still, having sinks and an indoor toilet (even if the tank has to be manually filled) are major luxuries. We are counting our blessings. Our house is a four room “squaredoval” (square like a block house, but with a thatched roof like a rondaval), with a large room divided by a half wall into a kitchen and living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small storage room. It is great. Our compound also has several rondavals, a strip of motel-style rooms, a conference hall, a resource center, and a large kitchen and dining hall. It is a great place to live, and is well kept.

Brandi will be working as the Youth Desk Officer. She will be in charge of managing youth groups such as the choir and school-for-drop-outs that currently meet, as well as starting new groups and facilitating ways for the youth to be involved in our NGO’s projects.

I will be working as the Resource Center Manager, which will entail building our NGO’s capacity to maintain, enhance, and use the compound. Some of my tasks will include working out maintenance schedules, facilitating renovations and repairs, managing the construction and use of the IT center, and finding new ways to involve the community through the compound.

A big part of both of our jobs will be training the staff here to do everything above, since we are only here for two years.

The past few days have seen us meeting the important people in town, such as the chief, the principals of the schools, the police chief, the community council member, and the staff of the local clinic. In addition we have spent the past two days in a workshop with our coworkers to review the NGO’s project proposal from 2011 – 2013.

We are really excited to be here and to start digging in to our work. We have a lot of learning to do, but so far Qacha’s Nek and our partner NGO are treating us very well!