It has been a long time since I wrote a blog post. We have been really swamped out here, and I haven’t found much time to write.
We just wrapped up our Youth Action Week last Saturday. It was a great week for us, SMARTD, and the community. We were joined by Volker Schlott and Jocelyn B. Smith from Germany, who helped us form a mass choir featuring over 80 students from three area schools. They also wrote a brand new song titled “Matla a ho na”, or “The Power Within”. We shot a ton of video over the course of the week, which is headed back to Germany to be edited in to a short film. I will post when it gets released.
Over the course of the week, we met the students at each of the three schools. One school had over 120 students turn out for the rehearsal! The kids, teachers, and our guest musicians all had a lot of fun learning the new song, singing old songs, dancing, and working on their voices. We also had the opportunity to show our guests a few of the SMARTD projects.
We traveled out to a remote village where we visited a women’s group who have built an extensive system of gabions, stone walls, and catchment tanks to control erosion and heal gullies on the side of a mountain. It is a massive amount of work, all done by hand by just twelve women. It is women like these that truly inspire me. These women are not paid to do this backbreaking work (imagine hauling sandstone rocks up the side of a mountain endlessly, week after week). They do it because they care about their homes and their community, and they want to stop the erosion and reclaim the land belonging to them. They aren’t doing this for handouts, they are doing it simply because it is the right thing to do. Amazing. It is these kind of people who will make or break Lesotho as development continues, not politicians or foreign aid workers.
We have also started working with an area primary school. Once a week, we provide training for their teachers in the national Life Skills Syllabus. We are also providing them with computer training, which has been a lot of fun. We have only had one lesson so far, but everybody had a blast. Unlike the States, there is no stigma regarding age and the ability to learn new technologies. It is great to see men and women of all ages really diving in. It is amazing how much faster you learn if you aren’t convinced that you are “too old” to learn new tricks.
As the schools close for summer break and everyone gets ready to wind down for the holidays, we are going to be headed in to Maseru for more training. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the new year. We will open the youth and IT centers full-time. We hope to expand our Life Skills Trainings to other schools. We are also reaching an agreement to bring, for the first time, high-speed Internet to our area. This is no small endeavor, and watch for an announcement in the next couple of months on what you can do to help with that project.
-Wes
Monday, November 22, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Preparations, budgeting, and purchasing
Time for a quick update on what we have been doing.
The past few weeks have been pretty slow as our preparations for the youth and resource center wrapped up and we waited on our funding to arrive so we could makes our purchases and actually start setting up. Our funding was approved (in part) and arrived a few weeks ago, which led to a few frantic days of rehashing our budgets. We have also spent some time working with the staff here on revamping their budgeting and planning procedures. All very exciting stuff. Though I'm sure you're craving more of this riveting information, I'll spare you the details.
Things continue to go very well. We are wrapping up a trip to Maseru where we picked up the four computers for the IT center, as well as a ton of stuff for the youth center. We are literally going back with a truck-load of stuff. It is very exciting to see things coming together. Back in Qacha's Nek, the carpenter is finishing the painting of our new bookshelves so we can stock them and move the desks back in to the resource center and set up the computers. Meanwhile, the artist is painting several large murals on outdoor walls on subjects such as HIV/AIDS and healthy living, nutrition, hand washing, and geography.
The next month will be very busy as we prepare for a Youth Action Week we will be hosting alongside our German supporters and the opening of the youth and resource center. We are also conducting trainings for the primary school teachers so they can start teaching life skills to their kids. The school is great, and we are very grateful to be able to work with them.
Otherwise, not much is new. We are continuing to settle in to our house and Qacha's Nek. Lesotho is feeling like home, and it is strange to think about living back in the States with all the luxuries we were used to. We miss everyone back home- wish you were here!
-Wes
The past few weeks have been pretty slow as our preparations for the youth and resource center wrapped up and we waited on our funding to arrive so we could makes our purchases and actually start setting up. Our funding was approved (in part) and arrived a few weeks ago, which led to a few frantic days of rehashing our budgets. We have also spent some time working with the staff here on revamping their budgeting and planning procedures. All very exciting stuff. Though I'm sure you're craving more of this riveting information, I'll spare you the details.
Things continue to go very well. We are wrapping up a trip to Maseru where we picked up the four computers for the IT center, as well as a ton of stuff for the youth center. We are literally going back with a truck-load of stuff. It is very exciting to see things coming together. Back in Qacha's Nek, the carpenter is finishing the painting of our new bookshelves so we can stock them and move the desks back in to the resource center and set up the computers. Meanwhile, the artist is painting several large murals on outdoor walls on subjects such as HIV/AIDS and healthy living, nutrition, hand washing, and geography.
The next month will be very busy as we prepare for a Youth Action Week we will be hosting alongside our German supporters and the opening of the youth and resource center. We are also conducting trainings for the primary school teachers so they can start teaching life skills to their kids. The school is great, and we are very grateful to be able to work with them.
Otherwise, not much is new. We are continuing to settle in to our house and Qacha's Nek. Lesotho is feeling like home, and it is strange to think about living back in the States with all the luxuries we were used to. We miss everyone back home- wish you were here!
-Wes
Monday, September 20, 2010
First 5 Weeks in Qacha's Nek
We have been at site for five weeks now, and we are getting settled in to life and work in Qacha’s Nek. We have our house set up and it is starting to resemble a home rather than a temporary habitation. It is nice to finally be able to settle down and really unpack.
We work pretty regular hours- from 8:00 AM to 2:30 – 4:30, depending on the day’s activities. Our work is pretty varied. A lot of our time thus far has been spent meeting people in the community and attending workshops and meetings for our organization.
Much of my work also involves organizing the logistics needed to make the organization more efficient, such as setting up a schedule for transportation usage, and organizing materials and assisting with the technology they are already using.
Brandi spends a significant amount of time organizing materials for the Youth Resource Center, as well as meeting with supporting community members like the school principles to discuss how we can assist them and they can assist us.
We spent much of the previous two weeks budgeting as well. Our organization receives their funding for the fourth quarter next month, and we had to research and draft detailed purchasing plans to have our funding approved.
Life in our village is a little different than at home. After struggling with a problematic generator for weeks, they finally connected the permanent power lines a couple weeks ago. Having electricity all the time is a huge blessing. Water, on the other hand, is still problematic. We get it at night- sometimes. Maybe once a week in our house, though the compound gets it more frequently. Getting water in the house is a major cause for celebration. We can (slowly) fill up our four water buckets, and washing dishes becomes a thousand times easier. The first time we got enough water for the sink to work, I did all the dishes with a giant grin on my face. Go hug your dishwasher. Hug it right now. If we don’t have running water (the majority of the time, in other words), we go down to the compound buckets and fill them by hand, then haul them back. It isn’t far, fortunately, but the buckets get very heavy. For the record, just flushing a toilet, washing dishes, and drinking, two people go through about 40-80 liters of water a day. Ask me how I know.
We cook mostly everything we eat ourselves, from scratch. If we want Mexican food (assuming we have much-coveted refried beans from Maseru), Brandi makes tortillas from scratch, guacamole from scratch (also requiring precious, rare, and easily-spoiled avocados), and I cook bone-in chicken (all that is available) and then de-bone it afterwards for burritos. All dishes are similarly difficult. We are getting to be accomplished cooks.
There are three exceptions. If the field staff is here, the compound matron cooks everybody a huge Basotho lunch, usually with a starch such as rice, samp (think creamed corn), or papa (a stiff corn meal…thing), a couple vegetables such as steamed or fried greens, peas, pumpkin, or beet root, and chicken. It is awesome. On Saturdays, we sometimes go down to the road to our favorite food trailer. This is literally a tiny inoperable trailer that is converted to function as a miniature restaurant. She also makes Basotho food- usually papa, meroho (steamed greens), and chicken (during the week) or pork (pig’s ear, to be specific, which is remarkably bacon-like, served on Saturdays). She also makes incredible fries (chips here) that are rarely available.
Our final option is to venture in to Qacha’s Nek camp town, as we did last Friday. Qacha’s Nek is about 45 minutes away by private car. On Friday, we took public as nobody was headed that way by private. Taking public means you walk down to the road and catch one of the handful of “combis” clustered along the road. A combi is a small bus made to seat around 15 people. They actually usually carry closer to 20, sometimes more. Combis don’t leave until they are full, which means if you are the first person there, you might wait a long time. Fortunately, shortly after we arrived at the road, a partly full combi roared up and quickly filled with people who had been waiting with other combis. Even more fortunately, we were able to score the coveted seats in the front row next to the driver. The combi was beat to hell, and it was a probably only through creative engineering and repair and a series of miracles that the thing moved at all. This worked in our favor though, as the front seat backs were broken, making them similar to recliners. We are talking luxury of the highest order.
So we jumped in and the driver reached across, tied the door shut using a hole in the tape covering the void the window had once occupied and the grab handle, and we roared off. Hills ground the combi to a crawl, but through expedient (and exhilarating, or terrifying, depending on your individual capacity for risking violent death by combi wreck) use of the downhill slopes, we were able to make incredible time.
Living in a more developed village as we do, Qacha’s Nek holds little draw. The shopping isn’t any better than our own village. There are two things that hold our attention, though. The first is our P.O. box. The second is pizza.
Through the direction of other volunteers and ambiguous pointing from the locals, we tracked down Quick Serve, a restaurant with absolutely no sign or identification of any sort. This does not however, cut down on its popularity. I have no idea why, or how it came to be, but Italian food is very popular in Lesotho. Thus, Quick Serve makes a fine pizza. After a completely worthwhile hour wait, we got two incredible pizzas with olives, onions, green peppers, and shredded chicken, as well as Quick Serve’s staple item, french fries. It was one of the better meals I have had since arriving.
We were less fortunate on the combi ride back. We had to wait about an hour and a half for the combi to fill, followed by another hour and a half to make it home. We spent this time crammed, four abreast, in the back row, our packs jammed on to our laps and our knees in the seatbacks in front of us. This is more standard fare for riding public, and clarifies why, when disclosed to one of our coworkers that we had taken public to get in to town, her response was an astounded “Why?!”. All in all, not bad though.
-Wes
We work pretty regular hours- from 8:00 AM to 2:30 – 4:30, depending on the day’s activities. Our work is pretty varied. A lot of our time thus far has been spent meeting people in the community and attending workshops and meetings for our organization.
Much of my work also involves organizing the logistics needed to make the organization more efficient, such as setting up a schedule for transportation usage, and organizing materials and assisting with the technology they are already using.
Brandi spends a significant amount of time organizing materials for the Youth Resource Center, as well as meeting with supporting community members like the school principles to discuss how we can assist them and they can assist us.
We spent much of the previous two weeks budgeting as well. Our organization receives their funding for the fourth quarter next month, and we had to research and draft detailed purchasing plans to have our funding approved.
Life in our village is a little different than at home. After struggling with a problematic generator for weeks, they finally connected the permanent power lines a couple weeks ago. Having electricity all the time is a huge blessing. Water, on the other hand, is still problematic. We get it at night- sometimes. Maybe once a week in our house, though the compound gets it more frequently. Getting water in the house is a major cause for celebration. We can (slowly) fill up our four water buckets, and washing dishes becomes a thousand times easier. The first time we got enough water for the sink to work, I did all the dishes with a giant grin on my face. Go hug your dishwasher. Hug it right now. If we don’t have running water (the majority of the time, in other words), we go down to the compound buckets and fill them by hand, then haul them back. It isn’t far, fortunately, but the buckets get very heavy. For the record, just flushing a toilet, washing dishes, and drinking, two people go through about 40-80 liters of water a day. Ask me how I know.
We cook mostly everything we eat ourselves, from scratch. If we want Mexican food (assuming we have much-coveted refried beans from Maseru), Brandi makes tortillas from scratch, guacamole from scratch (also requiring precious, rare, and easily-spoiled avocados), and I cook bone-in chicken (all that is available) and then de-bone it afterwards for burritos. All dishes are similarly difficult. We are getting to be accomplished cooks.
There are three exceptions. If the field staff is here, the compound matron cooks everybody a huge Basotho lunch, usually with a starch such as rice, samp (think creamed corn), or papa (a stiff corn meal…thing), a couple vegetables such as steamed or fried greens, peas, pumpkin, or beet root, and chicken. It is awesome. On Saturdays, we sometimes go down to the road to our favorite food trailer. This is literally a tiny inoperable trailer that is converted to function as a miniature restaurant. She also makes Basotho food- usually papa, meroho (steamed greens), and chicken (during the week) or pork (pig’s ear, to be specific, which is remarkably bacon-like, served on Saturdays). She also makes incredible fries (chips here) that are rarely available.
Our final option is to venture in to Qacha’s Nek camp town, as we did last Friday. Qacha’s Nek is about 45 minutes away by private car. On Friday, we took public as nobody was headed that way by private. Taking public means you walk down to the road and catch one of the handful of “combis” clustered along the road. A combi is a small bus made to seat around 15 people. They actually usually carry closer to 20, sometimes more. Combis don’t leave until they are full, which means if you are the first person there, you might wait a long time. Fortunately, shortly after we arrived at the road, a partly full combi roared up and quickly filled with people who had been waiting with other combis. Even more fortunately, we were able to score the coveted seats in the front row next to the driver. The combi was beat to hell, and it was a probably only through creative engineering and repair and a series of miracles that the thing moved at all. This worked in our favor though, as the front seat backs were broken, making them similar to recliners. We are talking luxury of the highest order.
So we jumped in and the driver reached across, tied the door shut using a hole in the tape covering the void the window had once occupied and the grab handle, and we roared off. Hills ground the combi to a crawl, but through expedient (and exhilarating, or terrifying, depending on your individual capacity for risking violent death by combi wreck) use of the downhill slopes, we were able to make incredible time.
Living in a more developed village as we do, Qacha’s Nek holds little draw. The shopping isn’t any better than our own village. There are two things that hold our attention, though. The first is our P.O. box. The second is pizza.
Through the direction of other volunteers and ambiguous pointing from the locals, we tracked down Quick Serve, a restaurant with absolutely no sign or identification of any sort. This does not however, cut down on its popularity. I have no idea why, or how it came to be, but Italian food is very popular in Lesotho. Thus, Quick Serve makes a fine pizza. After a completely worthwhile hour wait, we got two incredible pizzas with olives, onions, green peppers, and shredded chicken, as well as Quick Serve’s staple item, french fries. It was one of the better meals I have had since arriving.
We were less fortunate on the combi ride back. We had to wait about an hour and a half for the combi to fill, followed by another hour and a half to make it home. We spent this time crammed, four abreast, in the back row, our packs jammed on to our laps and our knees in the seatbacks in front of us. This is more standard fare for riding public, and clarifies why, when disclosed to one of our coworkers that we had taken public to get in to town, her response was an astounded “Why?!”. All in all, not bad though.
-Wes
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Tom Maresco
Thank you to all of you that have sent your condolences to the Peace Corps Lesotho family in the wake of the tragic death of Tom Maresco. We had not had the opportunity to meet Tom, but the entire community here is shaken by his death.
By all accounts, Tom was an outstanding volunteer and an outstanding person. It was easy to see the enormous impact he made through the stories and the tears shared at his memorial by his fellow volunteers, Basotho and American counterparts, and students. We - both Basotho and American - are diminished by his passing.
Please continue to pray for the volunteers, counterparts, and students who were close to Tom, as well as for his family. Also, please pray that the investigation would be swift and successful, and that the coward who took such a vibrant man from his loved ones and from this country so much too soon would be brought to justice.
-Wes and Brandi
By all accounts, Tom was an outstanding volunteer and an outstanding person. It was easy to see the enormous impact he made through the stories and the tears shared at his memorial by his fellow volunteers, Basotho and American counterparts, and students. We - both Basotho and American - are diminished by his passing.
Please continue to pray for the volunteers, counterparts, and students who were close to Tom, as well as for his family. Also, please pray that the investigation would be swift and successful, and that the coward who took such a vibrant man from his loved ones and from this country so much too soon would be brought to justice.
-Wes and Brandi
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!
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!
Friday, July 23, 2010
We have our site!
We have a big update tonight. This morning our Country Director, Program Directors, and the rest of the staff in charge of selecting our sites announced where each of us would be spending the next two years of our lives and what we will be doing.
For those who are not in the loop, site placement is a long process and is probably the most nerve-racking and important thing we do in training. There were 33 sites available this year across the country. As couples, only 5 were available to us. We had to rank those sites and justify our rankings with personal preferences and qualifications. The Peace Corps staff then looked at our qualifications and essays and assigned sites.
We got our first choice. We will spend the next two years in the Qacha’s Nek district. Qacha’s Nek is in the highlands, and has few volunteers at this time. We will be in a small town, but will still be relatively isolated.
Brandi will be assisting our partner organization with youth development. She will be traveling to other villages to work with local youth, as well as assisting with developing youth programs.
I will be assisting the same organization as they set up a technology resource center. I will help with planning and ordering equipment, setting up the lab and training staff to maintain it, and designing curriculum.
We will both have many opportunities to work with area youth and with other area projects, as well as collaborating on each other’s jobs.
We could not be more excited about our placement. We are really looking forward to working with our Basotho counterparts in Qacha’s Nek.
For those who are not in the loop, site placement is a long process and is probably the most nerve-racking and important thing we do in training. There were 33 sites available this year across the country. As couples, only 5 were available to us. We had to rank those sites and justify our rankings with personal preferences and qualifications. The Peace Corps staff then looked at our qualifications and essays and assigned sites.
We got our first choice. We will spend the next two years in the Qacha’s Nek district. Qacha’s Nek is in the highlands, and has few volunteers at this time. We will be in a small town, but will still be relatively isolated.
Brandi will be assisting our partner organization with youth development. She will be traveling to other villages to work with local youth, as well as assisting with developing youth programs.
I will be assisting the same organization as they set up a technology resource center. I will help with planning and ordering equipment, setting up the lab and training staff to maintain it, and designing curriculum.
We will both have many opportunities to work with area youth and with other area projects, as well as collaborating on each other’s jobs.
We could not be more excited about our placement. We are really looking forward to working with our Basotho counterparts in Qacha’s Nek.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
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
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
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