Debate!

I’ve mentioned before that I was reorganizing the English club and one of our activities is debate. This past weekend, I accompanied three of my students to a regional debate competition which we have been absent from the past two years. Debate is organized by regional teachers’ associations and about a month ago I found out that we had been invited to compete. We were already mid-season when we began practicing but the students showed some serious commitment. They met every day of the school week even though most clubs meet once a week. I have no experience with debate but looking back I think we did pretty well.

Before I could even have my students begin practicing I had to figure out how debate worked. I spent hours on the internet and talking with other teachers to find out the rules and the particulars of debating in Lesotho. The only contact I’ve had with debate was watching friends compete once or twice in high school. Basically, three kids make speeches in support of a statement and three make speeches opposing it. Each side is a team. The adjudicator decides a winner based on delivery, content of argument, and English language usage. The topic is announced yearly and students spend the season researching and debating the same motion over and over. Teams are told if they are supporting or opposing 15 minutes before but are prepared for both sides.

This year the debates were sponsored by the Lesotho Revenue Authority (like our IRA) and so they picked a motion relating to taxes: “This house proposes that it is unfair for Basotho to be taxed on their hard-earned money”. This topic is pretty broad and can go in so many directions so the students need to research well. LRA hosted a briefing about the motion in order to give some basic information and allow for some questions. Other than the briefing, students read newspapers, asked people they knew, and some could even use the internet. My school is rural so we did not have the advantage of the web or even a library for that matter. I don’t think I ever wrote anything without consulting Google or Yahoo. I tried to lecture them on certain tax related things but I didn’t have nearly enough time to teach them everything. I’m really proud of the students for finding their own information. I consulted with other teachers to find our best three and then we sent them to do their best.

I really enjoyed going to the competition. I wore a tie for the event and another volunteer came with me to cheer on my students. I can’t say how many schools participated overall but they had three separate days of competition, each school going only once. The top three teams and the top three speakers over the entire day were awarded trophies. The debaters ranged a great deal in ability and style. Some were either unprepared or extremely nervous others were rowdy. I saw one girl go up greet the judges, state her position, then sit back down without a single argument with 7 out of 8 minutes to go. Real polite but not quite what you need to win a debate. Another school was apparently coached to be very aggressive. All their debaters walked away from the podium to speak and would stand face to face to confront questions from the other side. I’m still not sure if that was allowed.

My students were well suited for each of the roles they played and were excellent speakers. My first student, Mantolo, spoke as the leader. She clearly outlined our position (in this case we supported the motion) and gave a clear direction of the argument. Polite, clear, and a beaming smile. My second speaker was Thabo. His job is to do the bulk of the arguing. He spent the first part of his time ripping apart the opposition’s main arguments then went into detail with his own well supported argument. For 8 minutes Thabo held the attention of hundreds of students and faculty breaking only to cite his sources for the opposition. I’m pretty he convinced his peers to be bitter about VAT. My last speaker was Mphaki. He is a real character. I don’t want to call him sassy but that is what he was. I think he worked it well though. As third speaker his job is to counter argue the majority of the time and summarize his own sides argument at the end. I was a little nervous at first because he had been sitting on stage silent like a man waiting the firing squad. By the second minute he was on his game denying the opponents’ points of information with rolling eyes and one hand waving them away like they were flies. At one point he started dancing around on stage as he realized that his opponent was asking him a question he could shoot down impressively by quoting Adam Smith.

We didn’t win any prizes. The six trophies were split amongst the three judges schools. Think about that for a second. What is important, however, was that the whole room was buzzing about our performance. My students were happy with themselves and excited to have a chance at the prizes next year.

One Year of Summer

It occurred to me the other day that I haven’t been in winter since about this time last year. I love summer. A clear day filled with sunshine is all I ever wanted and I would much prefer sweating in the sun than freezing in the winter. With this year long summer, I might, for the first time in my life, be looking forward to the winter.

Summer here has been pretty intense. Along with the training and adjusting to life here, the heat was just as strong as any I have experienced. The African sun has burnt my skin and made me peel multiple times while I have been here (I’ll start wearing more sun screen). The hardest thing is not having air conditioning. No where can you go to escape the heat. Sure there is shade in places and cooler buildings but that’s really not the same thing. When you walk around all day in the scalding sun and ride in a minivan packed so tight grown men are sitting on your lap all you want to do at the end of the day is walk into a 7-11 blasting AC and sip a drink with ice cubes in it.

Ha Makhoroana is getting cooler now and I am really enjoying the crisp autumn air. We are just finishing with peach season and supposedly moving on to oranges soon (I haven’t seen orange trees). Some mornings are cool enough to make me curious about winter. There is something nice about having to need my covers in bed finally but I am nervous about living in my hut during winter. Lesotho is the coldest country in Africa. I know it’s still Africa but we do get snow fall here and my site has some altitude to it.

Anyway, just some thoughts on weather. I’m finishing up my first quarter now which I consider a success. I’ve accomplished I think a good deal. Speaking of summer and sunshine, I will be going on my first vacation out of country to Durban, South Africa the first week of April. I will be staying in a hostel on the beach. Maybe some shark diving?

What I’ve Been Eating

If you know me you know I like to cook. Back in the states I cook anything my mother taught me and then some. I like taking what I happen to have around and come up with something great to eat. Obviously, the difference here is that I am limited to what I can buy. The plus side to cooking in a unfamiliar place the availability of new and interesting ingredients. While I’ve been here I’ve started a garden (nothing is edible yet), sprouted beans to eat, and learned to butcher my own meat (this is a rare but great occasion). Although I am living in Lesotho on a strict budget I am learning to create my own meals that often end up awesome. My friend Andre just leant me a book by Anthony Bourdain called A Cook’s Tour. The book is about him traveling around the world in search of the perfect meal. Here’s an excerpt talking about why the French and Italians have such great cooking: “Few sane persons enjoy French pop music – or even the French much – but they know what to do with every scrap of hoof, snout, entrail, and skin, every bit of vegetable trimming, fish head, and bone. Because they grew up with that all-important dictum. Use Everything! (And use it we.) Why is that? Why them and not us? The answer is, in many ways, to be found in Vietnam, Portugal Mexico, Morocco – because they had to.” Sometimes I sit down to dinner and wonder to myself what this crazy concoction is that I have to put down my throat but often I find myself more than satisfied with my creations.

Not everything is completely out there. For instance I still have a variety of breakfasts available to me which are all normal. Eggs are readily available and keep for a long time unrefrigerated (who knew?). I bake my own bread and make Texas toast or toast it in my oven. Corn meal made into porridge tastes just like grits. I can make hash browns, French toast, and pancakes. If I bring back cheese from another town I can even make omelets.

I’ll also have a hot cup of tea or coffee in the morning also. I never packed a way to make real coffee so I’ve been stuck with instant. I hated it at first but I’m starting to get used to the empty taste. I usually use powdered milk also since again milk goes bad quickly without a fridge. A plus side of being in Lesotho is the large Indian population which brought with them their amazing and affordable supply of spices. I have all the ingredients to make fresh chai whenever I want. I use the powdered milk in this also but it really great.

Sometimes I have just improvised when I was craving a particular dish. I’ve made breadcrumbs from bread that was on its way out and I’ve made pasta from flour and water when I ran out. One day I was wishing I could just order some Chinese food. It’s such an amazing service to be able to pick up a phone and have someone bring you a steaming brown bag of food but turns out we don’t have that in Berea. Now I can make some pretty awesome fried rice (ask anyone) but I wanted some gyoza. Those little pot stickers fried, dipped in soy sauce, and served with rice. From making my own pasta I had an idea about what do for the pastry part. I rolled out some pretty generous sized circles and set them aside. For the filling I had cabbage garlic, ginger, carrot (for nutrition?), but for the meat I was stuck. Meat isn’t easy to get here. I decided to throw in this stuff called ‘soya mince’. It’s a ground meat substitute, made from soy beans, and sold dry in boxes. Normally its served as slop on starch. I had some open because I tried it one night to find my dinner was depressing me. So I threw that into the mix and stuffed the dough. I fried half and steamed the other half. I’d infused some red pepper and star anise into some sesame oil I had for the soy sauce. Bought myself a cold beer from the village- great meal.

One of the best meals I had was one weekend I went to a friend’s BBQ. This gets bloody. He starts off by whipping some fish out, fresh from the river. He throws that on the fire with lemon juice, some orange slices and various seasonings. I had been promised a slaughtering and as we were waiting for the fish to sizzle a whistle informs us that our brai (BBQ) meat was walking into the gate. When you think sheep you might a think fluffy, white, frolicking thing but rest assured this one wasn’t cute. It was a castrated male which is supposedly the best for eating. It had horns, it was fat, and as it baa baaed it had the potential to grow on you as any animal might. For those of us present it definitely had greater potential as a tasty meal. I’d killed a chicken in training but that was a lot smaller. I took a knife as three other men held down dinner.

WARNING THE NEXT PARAGRAPHS DESCRIBES KILLING AND SKINNING

I started trying to cut its neck but the knife was as dull as could be and I wasn’t making any progress. I was advised to just stab it, which I did. Thick, warm, dark red blood started oozing out onto the white wool. Guess how I know it was thick and warm. I really felt like I was sacrificing something. Maybe we should have had more ceremony. I thought I was done and we would let it bleed out but they told me to keep cutting through the spine. So there I was shoving this dull blade between vertebrae trying to detach the whole head when I notice the horrible noise. You might have an idea what the scream of an innocent lamb might sound like but it wasn’t like that and in a way it was worse because it was more real. It was trying to breathe and the air was being gurgled in the whole in its throat. It was soon over and although it’s kind of gross to look back on its easy to get over. Everything is used.

To begin preparing a slaughtered sheep you skin it. A few cuts in the right place, and the skin is pulled right off the carcass leaving the pelt in a single piece that can be made into whatever you can think of. The guts are in this sack like thing which is cut open carefully. If the gall bladder is ruptured the meat will taste bitter. With the gall bladder thrown to the dogs the rest of the organs are removed separated and cleaned. The cool thing about a slaughter is the social role everyone plays. Men and women work in groups. The guys work around the carcass skinning and ripping out organs and the women clean the intestines and other organs preparing them to be cooked. I think there are also certain parts reserved for either sex.

Don’t forget the point of this whole thing is to feast. The livers are sautéed with some onions and salt. Not many spices are used for any of the cooking but everything has its own flavor. When the livers are cooked through you just grab a piece and eat. It’s actually pretty good. Head is thrown on the fire and the brain is cooked later. Other organs are boiled down to a stew. I’m pretty sure you can even thicken the stew with fresh blood but we hadn’t collected any. The heart is kind of chewy but really tasty. I think I like that the best. Certain parts go to certain people based on age and social role. I tried everything thereby demonstrating that I am a full man. Normally this is done over two days but we ate the innards for lunch then moved on to the meat for dinner. The meat is butchered right next to the fire into whatever piece you want. I took an entire lamb leg to my mouth and felt like a king. It really doesn’t get much better than that.