One Month At Site

So this Saturday, September 6 marks my one month at site. Also happy birthday Danielle!!! And really what have I accomplished thus far? That is a remarkably hard question, believe it or not. Thus far I have accomplished not going home. This past week was particularly hard. The homesickness is starting to creep up on me. Sunday was practically hard being one of the coldest days I’ve had here with outrageous wind and my electricity was out in my house so it was the loneliest day yet and I just sat huddled under blankets and read, by candlelight. Also while I am hitting on your empathy this Friday the strangest thing happened, I was walking out of the compound to go get my friend Becky who was staying with me over the weekend and there was this approximately 12 year old boy walking around with a long sleeve shirt on and no pants or underwear. It was very pathetic. I really couldn’t do anything because I wasn’t sure of cultural implications and such, because one false move and it could ruin your reputation as a volunteer. I desperately wanted to just throw him a towel or anything. However in the end the man who owns the Jakaranda pulled him aside, scolded the poor dear, then wrapped his shirt around his lower quarters and sent him on his way. This was the most desperate thing I have seen thus far I believe. I have seen the malnutrition children, people with pellagra, malnutrition people with HIV, people on ARV’s that get these horrible skin rashes, but I think this tops them all. The kid without the pants. I’m sure I’ll see more of the like though. But this past weekend I did have a bit of a girls night on Saturday with Becky, Tricia, Ashley, and Maya we had stir fry, chocolate covered popcorn, and sangria, it was a good time (I’ve posted pictures of it in the spring has sprung album along with more of the area)
So onto happier things. Well I did accomplish this much in my month, as of today, I’ve alphabetized the drug storage room, took inventory on the drug storage room, introduced Garth Brooks and the New Pornographers to the younger people who work here, managed to cause the whole compound to lose electricity twice (which I’ll get to), finish “The Fountainhead” and make an appointment with one the counselors here to have my hair put on dreads, which is supposed to happen this Friday. And yes I will post the promised picture. I’ve also made friends with the bo-me (refer to the vocab list) that work at the clinic. No this is not a lot, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing a lot right now anyways. Although I do think the people at the clinic are a little disappointed that in the first week I didn’t fix their drug inventory problem. I think they thought I would be able to just write a computer program that automatically knows how many drugs are here right now, which types and keep track of what they hand out each day. They just assumed I’d know how to do that, I was then like I know hanyane (Sesotho for very little) about computers. I told them I would research it, so we’ll see how that goes. Also I love how they mention it once or twice, I try to get the pharmacy technician to work on it and help out, she doesn’t then they just give me more work to do, uggggghhhhhh. I could go on for a very long time, but I’ll save you all. Oh but I did make the compound lose electricity twice. So since I don have electricity I bought this electric tea kettle so I don’t have to use so much gas on heating water and it takes like no time for it to heat, well what it also does is overload the solar electricity system here, it took plugging it in twice for me to get that.
Well so not much has happened and on top of that my body is slowly disintegrating. It is literally so dry here that my skin flakes off, so I am literally disintegrating. Oh outside of the fact that I’m the nutrition asshole who went to Lesotho and gained weight while there is a boy outside of my window who doesn’t have pants on. Great. But my skin is flaking away regardless of how much lotion I put on it, I hurt my foot walking two hours to the next closest clinic, and my jaw is locked up. Which you think would make eating even harder and that I would eat less, but no, back to me being a fat asshole in Africa, I still get the food in one way or another. Well so sorry about the bitch fest but I fear I won’t be seeing any Americans this weekend and you all are catching the brunt of it. Kea soabile (Sesotho for ‘I’m sorry’).
Ohhhh! I can’t believe I almost forgot the best story from the week, I promise it is my last and void of bitching. Okay so Monday I walked to Good Sheppard (which no one told me how far away it was so I thought it was no big deal to walk, 2 hours later I was not so happy). I’m well let’s see about a quarter mile outside of the clinic and there is this ntate walking on the tar road too (which is also used like a sidewalk and people just wander around in the road and it is a miracle nobody has been hit yet). So this ntate walks up to me and we exchange the general Basotho greetings then he rambles something off in Sesotho and I tell him I don’t understand because my Sesotho sucks. Then he changes to English and says something that sounds like “I have drugs for your whiteness” and I’m like “what????” and he says it again and I’m thinking okay this is probably a traditional healer and how do I explain to him without hurting his feelings or breaking some sort of cultural norm that I’m just fine staying white and that I don’t want his drugs. Turns out he was just trying to convert me to join the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Lesotho. Somewhere in our cultural and language gap Jehovah’s became “drugs for your… “and Witness became “whiteness“. He was actually really nice and left me alone once I told him that I was not interested. So there’s my funny story that couldn’t wait. Sorry I wrote for so long so, read it in installments if you have to, but then again you can just omit all the bitching too, sorry. Well I will finally stop rambling and let you all get onto your busy and efficient lives (two things I desperately miss). Have a wonderful week!!!
Okay one last thing for real, I’ve added a vocabulary list of words I will probably use frequently in my blog that you might not know and I’ve added a quote box where, if I think of it will put up quotes I like, the first is from Lord of the Rings naturally.