Shoot Girl, You STANK!!

Week 1(ish)

Before I post everything from this week I would first like to say, I am perpetually covered in dirt, scratches, which then equivalents to blood followed by bandaids or “plasters,” bruises, gashes, sunscreen, sweat and as of today, metal and slag.  Thanks to the latter two, I totally smelled like my ex-girlfriend, Number 1, and I could not wait to dump that 5L bottle of hot water I collected all over me, post scrubbing the hell out of myself w/ Dove, of course.  Have I mentioned I’m going to not only want but NEED a body scrub when I get back?  My god!

I’m still debating how to best blog considering internet is minimal and the speeds are PAINFULLY slow.  I’m journaling almost daily, sometimes I feel like it, sometimes I don’t, so I think I’ll just start each entry from the date of my last written journal and paste my way down.  Each individual entry will be dated and I like coming up with titles so, I’m doing that too, since this is really for me anyway. Sound good Me?  Why yes, yes it does!  =)

Oh and btw, merry x-mas eve eve, bitches!

Pfffffffffffft…

Thursday, 16.December.2010 – 8:25pm

It’s hit – exhaustion.  Since Tuesday 4:00am PST until now, which is 10:30am PST Thursday and 8:25pm Lesotho time, I have slept a total of 2 – 3 hours thanks to ridiculously uncomfortable flying conditions and not coming prepared for Seattle like conditions in Lesotho and gripping my sheets, shivering most of the 3 ½ hours I had available to sleep, once I finally arrived.  Seeing all my favorite guys today kept my adrenaline surging but now, I’m done, burnt toast, a warm rolling rock *gags* and I want to crawl under a rock while listening to the frogs ribiting, the crickets chirping and the water trickling.  Heaven… even more so since I think I got all the mortar out of my hair.

I Thought You’d Never Ask

Saturday, 18.December.2010

 “I thought you’d never ask,” I said after Mary asked, “can you put it in my mouth?”  Ahhh, let the quote capturing begin!  Leave it to us, or I guess me to keep things clean for about a millisecond but know, I do try to show some restraint when working with the kids under the legal age of filth.  Notice how I said “try.”  The first day or so I was too tired to even speak, let alone transform everything said by everyone into something sexual but fear not friends, I am back!

I arrived in Lesotho in the wee mother effin hours of the morning Thursday and it immediately felt like I never left.  Almost everything looks the same, the country is just as beautiful as I remember, bright, white, smiling faces surrounding us daily but what the hell was all that RAIN?!  I didn’t sign up for that.  Not only did I not sign up for that, I didn’t PACK for that so after getting rained out of work our first day, we all went into Maputsoe to use the internetz and all bought gummy boots so our feet don’t rot off what would then be nubs of ankle.  Guess what happened?  It stopped raining! J  Oh well, now my $5 Target cargo boy shorts (really the best for hard manual labor) and wife beaters will be sufficient attire for the remainder of my 2 months here.  Hey dykey!  Ok, so not all was lost with work and we got crackin on doing parts of the library, which we are apparently expanding and putting in a computer lab.  This was a nice little addition I was not aware we were doing.  Maybe I don’t pay enough attention or maybe I just never went to a single meeting about the project. Heh – oops!  The library is getting electricity run to it next week so we can set up the computers and THEN, COMPUTER  CLASSES BEGIN!  I’m going to see what I can do to help with those as much as possible and keep them going when Ann leaves a few weeks later to head back home.  I immediately thought of Zimmer when I realized this was an opportunity here. J

What’s a day of hard work without a trip to the local bar they so cleverly named Tarven?   I’m sure they meant Tavern but we’ll cut them some slack on their lack of spelling abilities because the beer is good and cheap and well, we’re in 3^rd world Africa.  Mandy, Tessa, Row, Mary and I sat on the hillside, post Mandy and I getting marriage proposals and me getting man handled by 2 of the girls in the “bar” area, sipping our monster 750ml Black Label beers before walking back up the road for dinner, which Rome was so lovingly preparing because we are sans a chef this week.  I made it through ½ my beer and was already buzzed and after dinner tired drunk had set in so I turned in and EARLY!  I had almost no sleep in the days prior, woke at 5am that morning to start work and a monster beer were a recipe for passing out at 8pm.  Mmm… luscious sleep J

Yesterday was RIDICULOUS!  Ridiculous by way of completely making up for what time we didn’t work the first day we arrived.  Shit!  Rome started the day with, “this is probably the most important day of the project.”  Thanks Rome, no pressure or anything.  Everyone spent the entire day capping the end of the railing of the bridge, that’s what I did the entire time, which was a pain in my ass, and a bunch of others finished the supports for the middle of the bridge railing and then… the concrete pour!  It was intense, insane and while kids were running “boogeys” along the bridge, I had to screw and move my ass before my head became decapitated or I lost more of my ass (my ass has shrunk the past few months).  Our normal work days are from 6am – 5pm w/ a nice little break and long lunch but yesterday, oh no!  Work commenced at 6am, as planned, but we had no break, lunch was short and we weren’t headed back up the hill to our nuns quarters (I became a nun while away, didn’t you know?) until freakin 8pm!  We were pouring the last of the concrete at dusk and because we were in a hell bent rush to finish the last of the caps we, or maybe I, totally fucked up and the side blew out right at the end.  AH!  We’ll see how our fix job looks when we remove all the support Monday.  To end the night… I showered w/ a trickle o water, par for the course the next 6 weeks, inhaled my dinner and passed out w/ my head in my hands attempting to learn French while Lady Gaga was blaring from the other side of the grounds… I wish Weez was here still!

System back up

Sunday, 19.December.2010

Low and behold – I finally get to my netbook –  I have decided I need to name her but I haven’t thought of anything yet but she’s pretty and red sooo… trixy, that’s it, my netbook’s name is Trixy –  but I just got into a debate about immigration and now I’m not in the mood.  We hiked today.  It was fun.  I’ll come back to you later Trixy after a few games of Minesweeper and maybe some learning of the French.  I always come back.

HOURS later –

Rosetta stone can lick my vag!  I guess I can’t complain though, for reasons I will not share via a public forum, but good god.  I SWEAR my pronunciation of “café” is correct you stupid bitch!  That’s me, screaming at my computer mic.  I think after the 238,574,325 time of it dinging me incorrect I said something to the effect of “café you mutha fuckin bitch” and it dinged correct.  Joking, it still failed me.

Sunday is our day of rest, thank you jesus, literally, because we are, after all, working at a Catholic High School.  At the beginning of the week I promised one of my favorite little guys, Jackie, that we’d go hiking with him through the hills on our break day.  In fact, he actually made me pinky swear, which I taught him in 2008 – how freakin adorable is that?!  It’s about as adorable as him still carrying around a hacky sack with him, which I also introduced him to in 2008.  It’s pretty much a given that if you come to Lesotho, you want to adopt this boy and Mandy has made note, a number of times, she’s “going to pull a Madonna” on his ass and take him from his mother, I then tell her she needs to get in line, a very long line.  I don’t want to adopt him though, I want to steal Mongee and Matela and take them back.  I will share stories of my favorite lil guys later because a full entry needs to be made specifically to all their loveliness. I mean, they are one of, if not, the main reason I came back here and why I’m spending 2 months sweatin it out in the scorching sun, showering with a trickle of water and eating so much meat and cheese I’m going to be backed up for a week.  Where’s an apple?!  Someone give me an apple!  *Mandy comes over w/ an apple* Oh, why thank you Mandy. 

I rabbit trailed… where was I, oh yes, the hike with Jack Attack.  Have I mentioned already how absolutely jaw dropping beautiful Lesotho is?  We’re at about 6k feet above sea level, it rains torrential thundering storms almost nightly so everything is green and lush, the hill sides of rock and green are gorgeous and the flat lime stone river stream things are just fantastic.  I mean, where else can you walk around and hear the sound of cow bells but it’s actually a bell around a massive sheep’s neck and just around the corner are about a dozen other sheep and just down the hill, around a rock or two are the two Sheppard boys tending to them and multi-tasking like champs by attempting to shove MONSTER rocks down the hillside, making an exploding sound as they shatter against other rocks on the tumble down?  I’ll tell you, no where!  Well maybe somewhere else but I haven’t been there yet.  We were initially going to see this cave a ways away, which would have also meant having 20+ little African kids bouncing around the hill following our alien asses but we got a bit side tracked.  There are these long flat river beds of lime stone that line the base of the cliffs/hillside and last time I saw them, a bunch of kids were sliding down them like it was a water slide.  It was SO awesome so of course I want to try it!  Jackie and I see a great spot where we can scramble down the hill to the closest of the riverbeds and everyone else is just following us wherever we go so they remained close behind, bitch (you can’t end a sentence w/ a preposition).  There was a great spot where the angle of the rock was PEEERFECT for laying and catchin some rays while listening to the water rushing down the hill.  Humungous rocks lined the side and all of a sudden Mary says, “hey, so the girls at my gym have a thing where they take pictures of themselves doing handstands all over the world.  I want to do it!”  Guess what that started?  Handstand session!  20+ kids weren’t following us around but looking up all directions around us, you could see little heads peering down at the craziness of these white people doing acrobatics by the slippery river. We all have fantastic pics of us upside down all over the hillside in Africa now, which also means I remembered 1 of 2 of my athletic goals of 2010, which was to do a wall supported handstand push-up… check check DONE!  I just breathed on my knuckles and rubbed them on my shoulder – could you sense it?  I wanted to hike up the hill to the other river but after we got distracted by the weird but rad looking aloe plant, where I grabbed some and smothered it all over mandy’s back, people were getting hangry so we turned around to head back, sans a cave sighting.  As we approach the school there are some intimidating black clouds off in the distance and we start to hear the rumble of thunder.  Our steps quickened and after a brief pit stop to try to get a little kid to do another handstand (he was doing one as we turned the corner and saw him), we headed back to the bridge WE poured, along w/ the prior weeks workers, and got back into the nuns quarters SECONDS before the rain started to dump. 

Speaking of dump – that’s not going to happen for awhile.  Mandy just said, “I have not had a problem.  You can put that in your blog.”  So there you have it, colon update from Mandy and I, international travel updaters extraordinaire.

Socially Conservative ;)

Wednesday, 22.December.2010 :: 1:20pm

Down 2 and waiting for 10.  It’s transition day and we can kiss our calm weeks good bye with the arrival of a packed house from here on out, which also means sharing a teeny tiny room for the next 5 weeks.  My god!  One would think that would also mean when the cat is away the mice will play but not when the cat is Rome and you have 5 crazed workers left behind to fend for themselves.  I currently have one very bashed left index finger thanks to spending my morning chiseling the shmoo off the concrete bridge wall/walkway.  It was just me, listening to a little Tabacco, Nikki Minaj and Damian Marley/Nas when a few kids came by to ask about any work.  I sent all of them to help with the fence but one kid just chilled and sat there, watching me hammer away at a flat crow bar on concrete, occasionally swearing and surprisingly, I had never seen him before.  This is the story of Pulae (poo-lay).

Pulae is a really quiet boy and sat on the side of the bridge, a few people passed and few words were exchanged, and he just stared at the uneventful happenings of my work.  

I said my hello, “Tumela (too-may-la),” which is Sesotho for “hello” or “good day.”  I told him I was chipping away the remnants of concrete from the bridge so we could prepare it to get a layer of plaster.  He looked oddly interested and we exchanged names, “I’m Isacc” he said, “it’s my blessed name.” Thunder roared on the other end of the hill and he calmly said, “the rains are coming.  I like the rain.”  He eagerly wanted to help me with the chiseling and I wasn’t one to turn down any help considering I already felt like my hand was  morphing into THE CLAW after banging away for about an hour already.  The work ethic of these boys is ridiculous, not to mention their strength to weight ratio!  Pulae and I took turns with sweeping the side of the railing and chiseling and as a few rain drops began to fall he explained, “my name means ‘rain’ in Sesotho.  My mother said it was raining very much the day I was born so she named me Pulae.”  He just smiled and asked about a man who had volunteered a few weeks ago named David.  “David was my best friend, I miss him.”  

Pulae is 18 years old and is in grade B at Holy Names, which I think is something equivalent to an 8^th grader in the states, kind of, I say “equivalent” very loosely.  He loves mathematics and science, enjoys dancing, singing, playing this wicked guitar the boys created (pics and video will be uploaded, granted my memory card makes it home… my mom told me to hide my memory cards up my ass this time… haha!), really digs house and hip hop and wants to be an engineer so he can create cars and planes.    His height is similar to mine and he’s wearing a Brazil futbul jersey that is probably a small and still 3 times too big for his frame.  His pants are a dark camo with massive rips in the crotch and the back of one of his thighs (thank god for long johns!) and he’s wearing boots that look like they may have been from the 50’s, no laces, coated in mud and the seam for the toe on both feet is completely separated.  At one point, while I’m sweeping up chunks of concrete w/ my hands, I turn to look down the bridge and his back is to me.  I can see his ribs poking out from under his shirt and the middle of his back is completely concave – he looks like something you’d see from one of those “feed the children” commercials on TV and it’s utterly heart breaking but yet, being here, it’s something I’ve either become desensitized to or… or… I don’t know actually.  He’s joyful in all our conversation and I as soon as he tells me he enjoys hip hop I had him listen to Nikki Minaj, but considering the lyrics are about as deep as something from Far East Movement, I switched it back to Damian Marley and Nas’ new album.  Leaning against the side of the bridge again, he comments, “I love this, it advises me.  They are speaking about respect.”  Love this kid!  We’re about done with our task and he looks at me and says, “who’s going to be my best friend when you leave?”  Did I mention heart breaking?  One thing anyone must prepare themselves for when coming to Lesotho is one question, “when will you be leaving?”  The kids like to know so they can gauge their level of attachment, although, even with preparation, is still hard when you leave, really, really REALLY fucking hard.  I mention my last little guy from 2008, Matela, and he exclaims, “he’s my uncle!”  Well Matela is 2 years younger so that threw me a little bit but definitely not an unheard of situation.  When we’re done, I ask if he wants to help me sweep and he says, “oh, there are booms over here!”  He jumps to the other side of the hill and starts tearing branches off a tree and makes an impromptu broom out of those!  Genius and resourceful these wonderful people are.  In the upcoming weeks, he is going to teach me to ride his family’s horse, show me a car he made out of wire, teach me to dance to Basotho (traditional music) and climb to the top of the nearest mountain.  Pretty stoked on this little kid and his passion for what he loves and his desire to share.  Being here is so completely and utterly humbling.  It’s hard not to leave here a changed person, you’d actually have to be so self absorbed, socially unaware and heartless to not be affected.

Speaking of leaving – volunteers leaving isn’t only rough on the kids but those volunteers who stay behind.  I’m already missing my ladies who left this morning, Miss Dimpled Mary who I’ll see in Thailand and Miss Mandy!  Until later…ladies… twas rad!

Hours later…

The church bells were just going like crazy – STORM TIME!!!  I think the rumbling through the entire sky would be sufficient warning though but, it’s still pretty awesome to hear the church bells ringing, warning all those in the surrounding hills to get themselves, their sheep, cows, goats, horses or whatever the fuck else they sheppard along, HOME.  LOVE LESOTHO!  Time to throw my laptop and nano on the charger before the power goes bu-bye.

Even more hours later…

I don’t think I’ve seen anything as beautiful as a raging thunder/lightening storm during an inflamed sunset, while the wind is howling, night critters a buzz and clouds moving every which way.  Only an hour later, it sounds like any other calm night - the clouds above have parted to completely open up the sky and its millions of stars and in the surrounding perimeter, lightening all around.  I.Love.Africa!