Ha Makhoroana and Malithuso High School

I have finished training and swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer on January 7^th. On the 11^th I arrived at my permanent site in Ha Makhoroana, Berea. My site is about two hours from Maseru, the capital, and an hour from the South African border. Ha Makhoroana is at the end of the tarred road so it is very accessible. There are many shops in the village which is great compared to other volunteers who have to lug months worth of supplies to their site from a camp town. My shops sell bread, canned food, eggs, cold soft drinks and even frozen meat! There isn’t a large variety of vegetables but I can usually find potatoes, tomatoes, onions, carrots, and squash. I do have cravings for cheese (which I can only get in the capital) and meat (its available but expensive and sometimes questionable) but I am getting over it. I am a fifteen minute walk through cornfields from the actual village. When you get to my site the view is spectacular. I am surrounded by mountains and behind my school is a cliff into a valley. All of Lesotho has some kind of mountains but the great thing about my area is that everything is full of life and green.

I live right off of the school compound in a Ronduvel which is a round, one room hut. It is somewhat spacious considering other living accommodations volunteers were given. I have my bed and dresser to one side, a table in the middle, and a kitchen area with a gas stove and cabinets on the other side. A long extension cord running from my host family’s house gives me electricity to power a light bulb, my laptop, or anything else I want. I didn’t expect to have electricity but it’s really great to be able to play music on my laptop in the morning or watch movies at night. Reading and writing by paraffin like I was doing in training was really starting to hurt my eyes. I even bought a modem which gives me wireless internet (which gets expensive because I pay by data usage). I might be living in a hut but I’m not exactly roughing it.

I have a barrel of water which I fill occasionally from the tap ten feet from the door. I boil and then filter water for drinking. I have pitchers which I use as my ‘faucets’ when I’m washing dishes or brushing my teeth. Buckets dominate my life. There are buckets for dishes, buckets for water storage, and even a pee bucket (I still don’t use that one although other volunteers insist I will). I have a pit latrine near my house. It looks just as you would imagine it. To bathe, I have my bath bucket which is large enough for me to sit in if I hug my knees. Showers are not relaxing. I set my bucket up in the middle of my room, lay out a towel and my soap, and heat up water on my stove. I mix the hot water with some cooler water to get the right temperature and then go about washing myself in sections. Head then arms, torso then legs. I can sit in my bath bucket but it’s not nearly as relaxing as a bath could be. I have heard stories about volunteers setting up a nice hot bath with salts or bubbles and lighting a bunch of candles and listening to music. If I try that I will be sure to post a picture of the set up.

I started teaching as soon as I arrived. My school began a week earlier than the rest of the country. Malithuso High School is run by an order of Catholic nuns and is only eight years old. It is on a beautiful compound that is continuously being added to. There are many classrooms and labs, a computer lab, a mini library, and the convent is in the back. I am teaching English Literature and English Language. Right now I am teaching form A (8^th grade) and form B. I will probably also teach forms D and E when the schedules are finalized. I am really enjoying teaching. There are fifty students in a class which makes getting to know my students individually difficult. The names are especially giving me trouble but I am confident I will eventually figure it out.

Although I have internet at my site, blogging uses a lot of data so I will not post from there. There is a nursing school in a town a short distance away that has free wireless so I will post when I go there. I will hopefully be able to load pictures also. The viewing screen on my camera broke en route to Lesotho so my pictures are shot without any idea of what is in the frame.