Ok, so, chapter 2.
We boarded the plane for Maseru, and had a fairly uneventful flight. That was, uneventful up until the point where the pilot came on the intercom and told us that he couldn't land. Apparently, there was a cloud over the airport, and between the plane and the airport they didn't have the capabilities to do an instrument landing. Sooo, the plane turned around and took us back to JoBerg. We sat around in the airport departure lounge for about 5 hours before they decided to cancel the flight. On the bright side, that meant that we got to spend another night at the Southern Sun. It took us another hour to get our bags back, or at least most of our bags, which had spent the previous night in storage at the airport. Bad idea. Several people's bags were missing, and when they finally showed up in Lesotho a few days later, they had been opened and hundreds of dollars worth of shoes, clothes, and electronics had been stolen (on the bright side, whoever took John's clothes replaced them with a white tracksuit almost exactly his size- we're still trying to get him to wear it out one night). The following morning, we returned to the airport, and actually made it to Maseru, on time and (mostly) intact.
Lesotho is a beautiful place. In the lowlands around Maseru, the landscape reminds me very much of southern Utah/ northern Arizona. As soon as we got out of the airport, I got my bearings, pulled out my compass, and realized that I was completely wrong, having forgotten that I was in the Southern Hemisphere and therefore the sun was to the North. Between that and all of the constellations being different (Orion is upside down, for one), it took me a few days to not feel like everything was backwards.
As for training, it mostly consisted of language instruction, cross-cultural awareness, health & safety, and the occasional field trip. After 3 weeks, we broke into our sub-groups (teacher trainers, english teachers, and math & science teachers) and left Maseru for Community Based Training (CBT). My group was placed in Mokema, a small village about 45 minutes outside of Maseru, and I moved into my first rondaval. If you haven't seen any pictures yet, a rondaval is a circular structure with walls made out of anything from mud to cinder blocks to cow manure (smells great in the summer!) and a thatch roof. Now, the roof deserves a little more discussion. When it comes to temperature control, you can't beat the thatch roof- it keeps the rondaval cool in the summer, and holds in heat in the winter. When it comes to spider control, however, it's another story. I referred to my handy field guide at least once a day, and counted 6 distinct species of spider at one point or another. The jewel of the collection was a Brown Button Spider, complete with an egg sack in the thatch. To visualize a BBS, imagine a black widow spider with a mottled brown, black, and red body and an affinity for steroids. I caught it in a glass for further study, and when I was done, I reached for my can of DOOM. Doom is an insect spray, and as you might judge from the name, it's fairly effective. I lifted the lid over the glass and gave a liberal spray. Whereas any earthly insect would have perished instantly, this spider walked up the the side of the glass and gave me the finger (or, at least, he would have, had he had fingers). I had to spray the little bastard 3 times before he finally died, and even then, I let it sit for a day before I burned the carcass (I had to wait for a full moon, just to be sure). As for the egg sack, I stood up on a chair and coated a good 2 square feet of the ceiling with Doom. In the process, I'm pretty sure that I inhaled enough of it to ensure that my children will have flippers.
I'm not sure what else to say about training. Most of it was fairly straightforward, including practice teaching and running workshops for area teachers. We had the benefit of many of the previous year's PCVs helping with training, coming out to our village every day to lead sessions and observe lessons. Hopefully, next year I'll be doing the same thing for the next group of trainees. We returned to Maseru for good on Christmas Eve, and proceeded to have a proper evening about which most of us can remember very few details (which is probably a good thing). After a couple days break, we all headed out for a 3 day visit to our permanent sites.
The road to my site, Semonkong, is usually described as "getting better." An hour on paved roads heading southeast from Maseru gives way to another 2 hours on a "dirt" road winding upwards through the mountains. I put the word "dirt" in quotations because a straight-up dirt road would be a vast improvement. There are some patches where it seems that a road crew test-paved a 100-yard stretch, but did so by dropping piles of asphalt randomly across the width of the road. In other places, a single-lane bridge (often covered with water during the rainy season) will be just wide enough for the bus to pass, provided that the driver lines the bus up exactly right and nobody looks out the window (both for the sake of the balance of the bus and the sense of safety of the passenger). Regardless of the perils of the trip, the destination is well worth the 10-15% chance of death in transit. Semonkong means "Place of Smoke", named after the mists that often surround the waterfall just outside of town. The waterfall is one of the main draws for the area, and this combined with some of the best horse trekking and hiking in southern Africa makes Semonkong one of the main tourism centers. Also, at over 600 ft., the waterfall has the highest commercial abseil (rappel) in the world, which I will definitely be checking out as soon as I can. One of the lesser-known recreational opportunities in Semonkong is the Donkey Pub Crawl, which seems fairly self-explanatory. The next PC pub crawl is slated for late February, so around then I'll let you all know what it's like to get drunk ON my ass for once (that joke never gets old, by the way).
My home is on the top of a hill, overlooking the town, with a view of all of the surrounding hills and an amazing gorge that's about a 15 minute walk away. I have a nice little 12'x12' square room, part of a row house off to the side of my family's house. The 2 days I spent there in December were mostly spent fixing the place up- the walls were the most upsetting shade of seafoam/teal/light-turquoise-death that I've ever seen, and the paint on the ceiling looked like my buddy Brett's face a couple of days after an 8-hour hike without sunblock (he looked like he was molting, it was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen). I scraped down the ceiling, painted the walls a nice Smurf blue, pulled up the weird vinyl stuff on the floor, and rearranged the scant furniture, and now the place is almost livable (hopefully I'll get some before & after pics up soon). I'm looking forward to getting back up there later this week, at which point I can begin to build shelves and whatnot. Luckily, there is a hardware store in town. It's no Home Depot, but they have lumber, nails, and paint, which is really all that I need. I'm also planning on getting a couple of cats, and will be taking suggestions (possibly in the form of a contest) for their names.
I'm out of time now, but I'll be back tomorrow to talk about my job and what I'm actually going to be doing here. I really like to get mail here, even just a letter and maybe some pictures, so please write! Any letters, photos, and drawings will go up on my wall, and I have a lot of wall space to fill!
