So being Africa for a while, lets see I think it is five months on the sixth. I wish I could say that time is flying, but not really. I think it is sometime because I’m ready for things to get busy, because for me that is when time flies, but things really aren’t moving too fast around here. I know I’ve said this a multitude of times but as you know, everything moves a little slower here. Just yesterday one of the women who works in the kitchen was like, “Ausi Nthabi, you are always so busy, you work so hard.” I was really taken aback by this statement and was like, if you think I am busy now, you should have seen me a year ago, when I was finishing up my senior year of college, preparing for going to peace corps and doing extracurricular/volunteering and juggling whatever scraps I could pull together to resemble a social life. I rather enjoyed it. Anyways, back to the main point of this week’s blog, which I’m not gonna lie, will in no way live up to last week’s.
So we are finally finishing up our second phase of training, the first phase was the training stuff in our training villages and like sitting in endless classes to teach us what we need to know. Then the second phase is our first three months of service at our site when we are supposed to kind of observe the situation and just take in the glory of village life in Lesotho. I approached my phase two a little differently, I first established a daily routine then set off in search of work, which I found some but got a days work done in like 2 hours. So then just wandered around aimlessly to pitch in a hand for help here and there and then I also managed to start working with the counselor here on some small projects and kind of set goals for what we want to achieve. It’s still in the works. Oh and just last week I gave a presentation, which attempted to cover everything you will ever need to know about nutrition in the village life, which took all day. We had to allow for a lot of time for translation and that really impacted the time factor. So phase two will come to an end and I will be free to move about South Africa because in these three months time I could not leave Lesotho and could only leave my site 2 weekends/month, and if anyone knows how restless I am, you can bet I was gone every weekend I could be, so it is a relief that that is over.
Moving right along to the title of this week’s post, language. Even though I speak a very limited amount of Sesotho, I have come to realize it kind of is a limiting factor, mainly scientifically speaking. There are so many western concepts and ideas that just don’t translate into Sesotho. Not to mention the same word for love is like, which if you are from the United States and know the western culture, know that can cause all kinds of misunderstandings and heartache. I was just astounded when I figured this out. I was giving a presentation and was blurting out all these things and the person translating for me was like, “you can’t say that in Sesotho” and all I could think was how important it was and wanting to tell the interpreter, “figure out a way!” Anyways this perception may be very one sided and due a lot to the fact that I don’t speak good Sesotho at all, but it nonetheless is an observation that has been worrying me for the past few days. It is probably a very ethnocentric opinion, but having talked to other volunteers and they have had the same opinion on it, putting some of my anxiety over the matter to rest.
Speaking of language, I had the most interesting conversation yesterday. So there are four people that work her that are like in their twenties, very kind of western and educated and they always hang out and I am that total nerd that tries to hang out with the popular group and never really gets to. Well yesterday there was nothing to do at the clinic and I just kind of ambled down to where they were hanging out from my house and started chatting with them. One of the girls asked why I never hang out with them and I told her it was because they always talk in Sesotho and I don’t know Sesotho that well (or at all really) and so she was like, okay we will try to speak English more if you speak more Sesotho, so I agreed and they jumped right into a conversation all in English. Well and the subject they were currently on was just ridiculous. So when they decided to allow me in to the conversation they had no reservations and were having a debate about phone sex. I was like, this is crazy. I won’t really go into the details of the conversation to keep this at least a PG rated blog, but I was dying laughing through the whole thing. I didn’t even try to be discreet about it, there was no way possible to be so. So that’s my awkward experience number 526 since arriving in Lesotho.
Well that’s really all I have for this week, oh besides the fact that it is beautiful here and that at any moment I feel like I am going to see the cast of the Lord of the Rings pop out from the other side of the mountain. It is pretty surreal sometimes. Oh and the rain has come so the peaches are coming right along which is great because I have big plans for those peaches. Anywho, Sala Hantle Bahotse Oa Ka! (stay well my friends) and E Bale Mafelo A Beke A Monate!! ( and have a nice weekend!!)
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