Conundrum!

So how many of you are familiar with the phrase “Shit or get off the pot?” For those of you not yet enlightened to the phrase it basically means to act, I don’t care which way you act just do so, so that I don’t have to sit around waiting for your slow ass to move. This might be kind of bad to say but I think this is where the Basotho culture is. I just think they aren’t sure how to act quite yet to solve their problems. Along with their, let’s call it “reactive constipation,” I think that they are just caught between a rock and a hard place, in which the rock would be tradition and the hard place is western culture. As a result mass confusion ensues and no one quite knows how to act. Western culture here is constantly at battle with tradition and people are confused as to which route to take and also many are ignorant as to why you do some of these western practices. They know they are told to do them, however they are unsure as to why. Allow me to give you a quick scenario (Peace Corps loves their scenarios) say a woman is in labor, she, in western thinking, should go to the clinic to have the child delivered in a doctor supervised, sterile environment but she doesn’t necessarily know the benefits to this. But in Basotho culture a clinic isn’t really the first plausible option, there are midwives, traditional healers, and your good ole’ ma that are contenders for delivery on the blessed day. So as a Mosotho woman, you would be legitimately confused as to the right option because each holds some sort of significance and the choice inevitably would be why go to a clinic when there is someone here that can do it and it won’t cost as much? Such intersections of western culture and traditional culture have produced more humorous results as well, such as one of the house keepers daughter who runs around in Old Navy knock offs or the “Florida” take away food stand in the taxi rank. There are sooooo many instances like this I’m kind of mad I can’t think of the better ones. Like I said they are countless. Oh here is another that happened recently, when I ordered a greek pizza at this pizza place which is okay by our standards instead of cucumbers, which was listed on the menu I got pickles on my pizza, it was interesting.
Going along to more depressing and serious topics, so if you are feeling down today you might want to skip over this part to the end where I tell you to have fabulous week. So here it is. This has been on my mind for sometime and maybe writing about it would be good. So there is this woman I know, I’m going to be discreet as to who it is just in the slight case that someone who knows here might read this. She is HIV positive and in stage 4 (the fifth stage is death) who is newly married and wants desperately to have a child. According to Basotho culture she will be doing a disservice to her husband and family if she does not have children and cannot see her mother or her side of the family until she goes to tell her mother that she is pregnant. Also as a woman she wants to have a baby. So her tradition says have the baby already and in my head I just, this is horrible, but I just pray that she does not most of the time. While she is healthy, with child birth and breast feeding (most Basotho women breast feed their children until 2 years old) she stands a good chance at passing the virus onto her baby, also being so far with her diagnosis will she be healthy long enough to provide her baby with good care and does she have the money to care for herself and the baby? I naturally do not say anything to sway her one way or the other, but rather indulge her and allow her to talk about how happy she would be if she had a baby. Maybe I am being to harsh in my judgment with this situation and really this woman is quite the HIV/AIDS success story she progressed to stage 4 but has gotten her CD4 count up to a high level which is great and she takes such good care of herself, she eats sooo healthy and exercises. I really have a good deal of respect for her and I respect their traditional practices, this is where we stumble into that infamous gray area. So I will be working on this conundrum for a while and let you know what I come up with. I can tell you this much though I will not say or do anything and join my fellow Basotho and be unable to shit or get off the pot. Have a great week (I promise I am having a good week too! I even get to go to Semonkong this weekend, one of the three tourist places in Lesotho, so don’t worry about me!) If you feel you have a comment shoot me a line!
Okay I’m making a quick revision in order to add a bit of a humorous story to end on a happier note instead of the terribly depressing one I’ve just shared. Sooo today I was sitting in the counselor’s office talking about doing some workshops for the support groups here. We are chit chatting , wrapping things up then one of the house keepers comes in to bring tea and she sits down takes a glance around the office and points to the box of condoms, indicating that she needs some. Okay, well apparently our relationship is much closer than what I had originally thought. So this is slightly awkward but my recent exposure to large amounts of condoms and situations that have occurred as a result of such exposure has made me rather numb to how uncomfortable this situation actually is. And on top of that I’m really glad that she is using condoms, and that whom ever she is using them with is actually using them, thus putting her in the need for some. It get’s better, the counselor shrugs and is like, those are no good, you should try these (he whips out a few condoms from his bag, which keeps on him because hey he is an HIV counselor). These new condoms are better, wait for it, because they are flavored. He then whips out another condom and informs me that this type is not as good because it is made by the Chinese and they have made them too thick, but he keeps it on hand so people know that now even the Chinese are making condoms. So there’s my funny little story to leave on a good note. If I haven’t said it already have a great weekend!