Some travel

Hey, quick post here. I am leaving for some travels here over the next few weeks so I might not be posting as regularly. Just wanted to leave you with some views from around here. The sunset picture with the city in it was taken from my yard the other night with a couple of big thunderstorms passing us by. The other two were taken just across the border in the Free State province of South Africa and were taken from the top of a small mountain a couple of friends and I climbed. If you look carefully, parts of Maseru are visible in the background of the one with all the farmland. Have a safe December and I will be in touch!

Public Spotlight

So I went to the grocery store, as I often do on Thursdays because it is the day one of the two weekly English-language newspapers comes out. So in addition to my fruits and veggies, I catch up on the latest goings on here and what a smattering of English language news sources from around the world have decided is important (they run stories from the Guardian (UK), Yahoo (US), BBC, Reuters, South African papers). It is always interesting. Today's issue was very heavy when I picked it up--the paper averages about 45 pages--4 or 5 in Sesotho, 10 on random business stuff cribbed from other sources and a bunch of pages announcing government contracts in addition to a few pages of local news and sport. Getting home I wondered if it was full of Christmas adds (despite the 80 degree plus Fahrenheit temperatures we have been having with lots of big summer thunderstorms), but I quickly realized it was the start of a different season here: exam result season.
Sitting in every newspaper purchased (for five rand...about 50 US cents), was a 130 page supplement that showed the results of the Primary School Leaving Exam. Every student in the country, every school in the country, listed in black and white for every other person in the country to examine. This was just the results of those who finished their 7th (and final) year of primary school. The other students who have to take the big, high-stakes exams (those who finished their 3rd year of high school--basically sophomores--and those seniors who finish high school) will also get the same royal, or ignominious, treatment when their results are announced in the New Year. Now there are some advantages to the system--I could check and see how the children of my friends who were finishing primary did this year, right down to the individual subjects (they show the results for English, Sesotho, Science, Social Studies and Math for primary), which was nice, so I can congratulate her next time I see her. And you can check to see which schools are not getting very many students to pass. I know students use these numbers to see which schools they want to attend to get the best results and parents peruse it to see which school is going to best serve their children.
But in another light, it assumes that all schools and students are equal and by pasting the results there for all to see, the students and schools who didn't do as well are there too for everyone to see and potentially criticize. Is it really fair to compare an English-medium primary school in Maseru whose students are children of government ministers, whose school has running water and electricity and access to internet and all the modern amenities Americans would expect from a primary school to a small mountain primary where the students come part-time when they aren't herding animals, that has no electric, possibly a communal tap for water if they are lucky and is hours on foot from the nearest post office, not to mention telephone service or internet access, which struggles to recruit qualified teachers because it is so remote.
As a once and future teacher I think accountability is important in education, as in any other field, and low-performers need to find ways to bring up the level of education for their students' sake. However, I feel that this particular rite of summer here is one that doesn't necessarily contribute to the furthering of educational aims here. People accept it, however, and even look forward to the results coming out every year. It is great for those who do well (they also publish the Top 10 list of students who got the best average), but I can't help but feel it is a bit unfair. I remain unconvinced on some level that this public shaming of schools and students that are not starting from a level playing field, but are being treated like they are, does some harm. What exactly the harm is I cannot say, but my impression is that it does not encourage those who have not passed to try again for fear of being named two years in a row, publicly, as a failure. There is no rule that says students can't try again next year, but especially for the Primary School exam, this naming and shaming seems a bit harsh.

Roof of Africa

So this weekend I helped marshal the Roof of Africa, one of the craziest and most technically demanding motorcycle races in the world. My friend Matt and I spent three days hanging out in various scenic spots in Lesotho waiting for the bikes to arrive, helping service crews organize themselves for the arrival of the riders and checking in the bikes when they arrived. It was a long three days, but well worth it. We moved progressively further from town each day into more remote mountain areas. Around 300 riders started on Thursday in the time trial, about 260 started Friday's section and about 120 on Saturday. Some withdrew because of injuries, some because of mechanical failures and others because they had to be able to hit a certain time for the course and couldn't do it. All-in-all, I don't know how many finished, but I can't imagine it was more than about 70. It was a brutally tough race over rocks, mountain passes and through some pretty difficult terrain. These pictures only capture the race around the checkpoints (the easiest and most accessible parts), but believe me, the riders reported some crazy obstacles. Of course it rained for part of Thursday and Friday taking a difficult trail and making it harder. I must say that all the guys are crazy, but at the same time, this is their ultramarathon and I respect them for having the guts to try it and to make it as little or as far as they did. We all have our vices and passions in life and these guys have a particularly wild one!
The winner was a guy from New Zealand who made the rest of the field look like amateurs (which they certainly were not). The best description I came up for his riding was that he rode his motorcycle down the hills like he was skiing, slaloming back and forth as if the bike were a part of his feet rather than a couple hundred pounds of metal. He gapped the field by a wide margin. The pictures on the left show some of the fueling stops with the support crews and a couple of riders I managed to snap photos of as they went by. The one of the rider headed straight down a mountain pass was on the last day of the race as the riders headed into the most difficult section of the trail. It was a mountain pass at 2200 meters (7,200 feet or so) that they crested, checked in and headed back down, only to climb up the pass on the other side of the mountain again! They had completed about 1/3 of the route at that point and still had a long, challenging day ahead of them. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

Working at Parliament/Running

So this last week was an intense one spent mainly in the Parliamentary Library. The National Archives sent me over there the other week when they didn't have the records I was looking for. It didn't seem like they get a lot of outside researchers there; in fact, it seemed like it was mainly used by Members of Parliament to do research on previous sessions and to stay current on the Lesotho and South African newspapers. But they were happy to have me sit in there and dig through stacks of Government-published newspapers from 1965 and 66 (the year of independence here). I have probably one day left there of work, but it was an interesting place to sit and work as it is right across a big driveway from the House of Parliament so I got to watch all the comings and goings of top government ministers and MPs while doing my work!

In other news, I traveled yesterday (leaving at 5AM) up to Ficksburg, a small town in South African about 80km (50 miles) from Maseru for their annual Cherry Festival Race. The town is in the middle of the cherry, asparagus and peach growing region of South Africa and the race was brutal! It was 23km (14.5 miles...or almost a mile and a half longer than a half marathon). It started out in town, but about 2.5 miles into the race, turned off onto a dirt/rock/gravel/mud trail that wound its way up and over the mountain that sits right behind town. Someone with a GPS watch told me we climbed over 250 meters in the course of the 5km (3 mile) climb. Then we ran on top of the mountain (more of a plateau really) in a series of ups and downs before dropping the entire 250 meters in about 3km (2 miles), in a part of the race that was especially hard on the legs. Then it was just 6km more (@ 4 miles) back into town. Ficksburg sits at an elevation of about a mile to begin with so this was quite the race. I managed to place 8th overall out of about 700 with an average right around 6 minutes a mile, which seemed pretty good considering. I am a bit sore today, but hopefully that will work itself out pretty soon! It was a good time and I even got to hang out at the Cherry Festival afterwards (think American midwestern county fair-type atmosphere with all things cherry for sale). Good times!

Lesotho's waterfalls

In case you were worried that all I do here is work, fear not. Last Saturday I went with some friends up to the mountains (about a 45 minute or an hour drive from Maseru) to hike to the waterfalls that you see pictured here. They are called Qiloane Falls (the Q is the click sound in Sesotho...try it). They are stunning, especially after a week where it rained a few times. The pool at the bottom is excellent for swimming, if a bit cold. However, this being Lesotho, you can just hike right down and jump in as many times as you want (one in my case). The hike to get there, which you see in the third picture was spectacular through the treeless high mountains. It was a quite managable hike (+/- 2 hours) through some spectacular country and a good excuse to get out of the city for a while on a nice early summer day here.

In case some of you are worried because I have not updated on my running in some time, I am still going at it pretty hard. I am planning to run a 23 kilometer race (about a mile a quarter more than a half marathon) this coming weekend in the South African town of Ficksburg, which is on the border with Lesotho about an hour north and east of Maseru. It is a partially off-road, up, around and down a mountain that, like everything else around here is at altitude of at least 5000 feet! I will let you know how it goes. Take care.

Degrees of separation

Happy weekend to you (even if it is mostly over). I was reminded last week how small and interconnected this country is when I went out for an interview. I had been given the name of a man from one of the other guys I had interviewed who he said would be interesting to contact. So on Thursday I set out for the place where he had told me to go (he said, just go to St. David's mission near the town of Mamathe's and ask for him). Sure enough, I rolled up and knocked on a door and found a secondary teacher who knew exactly where he lived. We walked together down to his house and he sat with me as I interviewed a very nice and informative gentleman who had been active in the Boy Scouts and had taught at various schools in Lesotho for 58 years (58!). At the end of the interview, I mentioned that I had a former teaching colleague who had lived just near here as well and asked if he had known her (she has passed away, this is 'Me Libe for those reading this who know her) and, of course, not only did this man know her, but he had taught with her and her husband at various times in his career. So here I was sitting in a man's house who I had met less than an hour earlier who was 55 years older than me and we had taught with some of the same people. It was a neat situation, a great way to end the interview talking about former friends and a good reminder about how small a country of 1.8 million people (according to the census) really can be.

Lest you think I spend all my time running around the countryside, on Friday I was asked to take part in a round-table discussion at the university on the US presidential elections, the crisis in Zimbabwe and the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the collection of topics seemed rather scattered I was a bit nervous about sitting on a panel like that, but it turned out very well (thanks to the skill of the moderator) and was quite interesting with a free-wheeling discussion about African politics, the role of western foreign policy and what should be done to move forward in these situations (not the US, but the others). The university has an interesting staff that gets many professors from around the southern African sub-continent so there was a lively discussion with professors and students (mostly local Basotho) that left me feeling more hopeful that someday there might be enough pressure from 'civil society' to force the hands of regional governments to bring about some constructive change in truly bad situations. Stay well!

St. Rodrigue in the news

Hello everyone, I was just informed that the BBC is doing a feature on the area around where I used to teach here in Lesotho, St. Rodrigue. The link is below, but it is a long-term project of theirs to chart how HIV/AIDS is affecting people in the rural communities. It could be a very interesting project, so please check it out at least once. I don't know how often they will be updating it, but you might want to check back in a month or two as well (I will try to keep up with it as well).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7697831.stm

Take care!

ps for those who know St. Rodrigue, I don't know exactly what they have shown on the Google Map at the bottom of the article, but it is not the main mission. It might be one of the clinic outstations (Ha Shoaepane, perhaps?)

Obama reaction in southern Africa

As I am sure some of you are curious as to how Obama is playing here in southern Africa, I copied an editorial from the "Sowetan", a South African newspaper that is, as its name suggests, based in Soweto, the former township outside of Johannesburg that was home to Mandela, Bishop Tutu and many other famous South Africans, and is widely available in the region as an English-language newspaper. If you want to check it out for yourself, their site is... http://www.sowetan.co.za

Anyway, here is the editorial. I think they captured the mood around here as I have seen it since Wednesday's announcement (6 AM local time on Wednesday), especially the first line. It is a kind of public euphoria, the likes of which I have never experienced, not really a 'he-needs-to-do-something-for-me-now', but just a 'right-now-nothing-seems-too-impossible-to-imagine' kind of euphoria. Enjoy.

Sowetan Says: Now all can dream of a fairer world.” Sowetan (newspaper), Thursday November 6, 2008. Staff Editorial

The US votes in a black president and now nothing seems impossible in the world. Barack Obama swept into the White House by offering voters hope for a fresh start after eight years of turmoil, despair and economic gloom. The victory of a man whose father was born in Kenya also gives hope to hundreds of millions of Africans throughout the world. He won fair and square by exciting the mass of Americans to the possibilities of a more just and equal order. Not since John Kennedy in the 60s have we witnessed such a spontaneous outpouring of affection and hope for the realisation of the American Dream, which cynics in the US and abroad have long dismissed as a Utopian fantasy. Now comes the hard work. Obama has raised expectations so high that any failures in restoring the US's broken economy while developing a more egalitarian society and a just foreign policy will bring out critics around the world with a vengeance. Revolutions are staged by those with thwarted expectations, not the no-hopers. Obama won his overwhelming victory by stressing multiculturalism and not once playing the race card. Maybe everybody in the US can dream of being treated equally regardless of race. But the realisation of Martin Luther King's grand dream has been spotty at best. Every nation's foreign policy will reflect its interests, yet the world lives in hope of a sensitivity to local needs and values, and an end to the crass venality of the Bush era. We expect the US to continue consuming far more of the world's resources than any other nation, but we hope it will no longer trash our globe in the process. Obama must ride the wave of optimism he has engendered to take the hard decisions that will often clash with the immediate interests of his constituents. But as many world leaders have learnt, these are difficult times that demand a new vision and a determination to do what is right by us all. And a son of Africa is the man of the moment who might just pull off that dream.

Quick update--elephant pushing

Hey, this will be very short. Learning new languages and about different cultures often lets me appreciate more the nuances of language. The Royalist party that I was discussing in my last blog is/was known as the Marematlou Freedom Party where Marematlou is a Sesotho idiom for the 'people who get together to push the elephant.' At the time it was formed, there was a Regent for the young King and the people who started it were concerned that the Regent would never make way for the young king, so they got together to try to 'push the elephant.' To ruin the suspense, they succeeded and the new king took over! Still, I think it is one of the best names for a political party that I have ever heard.
Also, people here in Lesotho (Basotho and expats from all over) are very excited about our new president. I have had many people come up to me or text me telling me how excited they were. Let's hope some of the expectations can be met.

A different kind of politics

Well, happy American election day to all of you. I cast my absentee ballot a couple of weeks ago and hope it arrived in time. Life continues to go well here despite a touch of sickness today for me. I still plan to get up early (3 or 4 AM) to watch some election returns with some American friends. Should be a good time.
The cricket match was a good time: imagine a baseball game that goes a lot longer and has nice grassy banks on which to sit and relax and watch the game. South Africa beat Kenya by a lot and a good time was had by all.
I had an interesting interview the other day with a man who was in the words of my friend who pointed me towards him: "a right proper gentlemen of a type they don't make anymore" and sure enough it was true. He was a very thoughtful, soft-spoken man of about 70 who had spent much of his life as a close adviser to the King of Lesotho during some of the more turbulent days politically here in Lesotho. So, yes, this man was a committed royalist (my friends who study British history and read this blog just did back-handsprings to find that people of this political persuasion still exist). He said he has had many opportunities in his time since then to join some of the political parties here (of which there are around 19 registered, depending on the day and who is splitting off from another party), but that this was not for him. Needless to say, he had a very interesting take on events in Lesotho in the 1950s and 60s (and even into the 70s but I didn't press him on that although if I had had more time perhaps I would have). So yea, research is still going well here and I am finding that I really enjoy finding people and sitting down to a chat with them about the past.
Viva le roi!

Talking history

So this week I hit the road to finally get started on some interviews here in Lesotho, or what I like to call, the interesting part of my project! It was good to get started with that and I had two really interesting people to talk to. One was a Catholic priest who works at the College of Education (the teacher training institute) and the other is a retired 81-year old who lives out in a small village outside Maseru (see last post about finding him). The attached photos are from that interview because he has rock art (very old stuff and very cool) on his property...the rock it is on forms one side of his sheep pen. Incidentally, stuff like that is what I love about Lesotho...some guy can just have history sitting in his back yard, he takes good care of it and is more than happy to show it to you. Many other places in the world, that would be a national park and you would have to pay big money to see it. Here, just an integrated part of life.
So anyway, I drove out there and had a great conversation with him. He snuck off to school at a young age when he was supposed to be herding animals. He made a deal with a friend who was also herding, each would spend one day at school and the other watching both sets of animals. He ended up as a teacher and worked his way up to the Field Commissioner for the Boy Scouts of Lesotho in the 1960s (as well as a founder of an anti-communist group that later merged with one of the major political parties) so he had some really interesting stuff to say about the days and years leading up to independence. Evidently the Boy Scouts played a big role in the actual celebration of Independence with them helping to get ready for it, acting as marshalls and also doing demonstrations like "pitching tents blindfolded" and other fun stuff like that!
Currently he has going what he calls his "little project" which is all the agricultural stuff you see in the photos. He has probably 2-3 acres until cultivation right now with a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as pigs and chickens. He has three hand-dug earthen dams and a series of pipes and taps so that he can water all parts of the extensive garden. Not bad for a little retirement side project. Evidently the Department of Agriculture is bringing people here as this is a model project and after walking it with him, I can see why!
So yea, life is good. Fieldwork is tough to get started but very rewarding once you get into it. I need to cut this off now because I am going to an international cricket match over in South Africa today--South Africa vs Kenya. Should be a good time. Fortunately it is only a one-day international, about the right kind of time investment for a group (there are about 8 of us going) that only about 1/2 the people really understand the game! Should be fun. I will try to post photos from that this weekend or early next week. Cheers!

How to find people in Lesotho

So today I set out to find a man who I had heard a lot about. He was a Boy Scout leader in the 1960s and was a very well known man as I had heard from multiple people that I should talk to him when I told them the project I was working on. Unfortunately, and this happens a lot, they didn't know exactly how to get in touch with him. Two people told me to check at the Catholic printing works (where they print the weekly newspaper and books), so when I was up there the other week I did. Again, they couldn't really tell me how to get in touch with him, but they drew me a map of the area where he lived and, like an earlier source, just told me to ask for him at the local high school. So armed with a vague knowledge of where said high school was I set out this morning from Maseru. It ended up being about 35 miles outside town and the road to it was paved (that in itself is impressive). I parked on the school grounds and just wandered towards the school with someone pointing me to the staff room. I walked in and introduced myself and told them who I was looking for. The first teacher I met whipped out her cell phone and gave me him number. Then the principal, a nun, walked in and told me she would find someone to take me up to his place. So five minutes after I arrived I was walking through the fields and then a village to get to this man's house. I show up, introduce myself and he says he would be delighted to talk to me, but he has a meeting to attend today and I should return next week.

Great. Interview set up, only took a bit of guesswork and three people to help me find the place. Then as I am leaving, he asks for my full Sesotho name. I tell him: "Thabiso Masupha" and then he says, "Of course, they have told me a Masupha would be coming to look for me and to speak with me!" The moral of the story: no matter how hard it is to find someone, the 'village telegraph' will beat you to the place where he or she is. He didn't know who I was or what I wanted from him, but someone (probably from the Cathlolic printing works) mentioned that I was looking for him and word got back. Good stuff in a small country! The interview, by the way, should be fantastic. He is a very nimble and spry 75 or 80 year old. I will keep you posted.

Urban hiking

Hello all, hope this post finds you all well. I am doing fine, although we still haven't really had the end of winter rains down here in the lowlands of Lesotho (lowlands being relative as Maseru is still at 5000 feet, but the mountains are much higher). We have been having lots of nice sunny days, but it would be nice to get rain, both for the farmers who need rain to plow and plant and for me as right now the place where I live has a terrible fly infestation that will start to go away with the rains. The photos I have attached are from a hike I did on Saturday. I have been going to the Maseru Hash House Harriers, which is a group that meets every weekend to have a run/hike in a different place. Different people each week set the trail with chalk and you have to try to follow it and they try to confuse you with multiple trails in some places. All in all, a good time and a good way to meet people. Saturday, however, I went out with two friends, John a Brit and Matt a Scotsman (pictures to the left) to a mountain here in the middle of Maseru. We had a good time setting the trail and there were some spectacular views. On one side we looked down on the large textile mills here (the huge buildings with the big blue roofs), on top, it was like a nature preserve. Unfortunately, the top is also used for Basotho initiation/circumcision schools that are a part of the coming of age process. Not all boys go to these schools, but the entire process is very secretive and they are not open to outsiders or even uninitiated Basotho. We tried to ask some people on the way up if there was a school currently underway and got a variety of answers. So we set out and marked the trail, noting at one point what sounded like singing, but didn't encounter any people. So today when the full group met for the hike, we figured we would be okay, but unfortunately, two guys on motor bikes chose this day to drive up the hill as well and this alerted the guys at the school that there might be others around so we were met at the top and firmly told that we had to turn around and cut the hike short. Still, we were able to do almost all of it and it was a fabulous day with great views.

New House

So this week I moved into a new, 'permanent' house that will be my home for the rest of my time here. As you can see from the photographs, it is a very cute little one-bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/study area. It is basically a little guest house in the backyard of an American couple who has lived either here or in Malawi since the late 1970s. They are very nice and have four young children (the oldest is 12 or 13, the youngest still in diapers) so I have lots of screaming and playing going on in the yard outside the entire weekend. It is a good time. I think it will be a very nice place to stay. It is located less than a half mile from the main border post, but is on a quiet side street...the main noises at night even here in the capital are insects and dogs. It is a nice space in which to work, cook, live.
This week was an interesting one work-wise. I got into the archives of the Catholic newspaper and scanned about 75 of their photographs from the 1950s and 60s. It was sort of like a mystery game, however, because while most of the photographs identified one person in the picture, or the group to which a bunch of people belonged, very few had identifying captions telling where or when the photograph was taken (the ones that did were, of course, mainly in Sesotho in very light pencil so I was squinting a lot). So I spent a lot of time looking at clues in the photos to try to get dates and places with them. The paper itself (it is a still-published weekly) is published on Wednesdays and I was there on Thursday so most of the staff was not working very hard and I had constant visitors looking to get more photos for me or willing to take a look and see if they could help with the identifying process. I got the feeling that while a few people might have stopped in before to ask for photos of specific people (big-name politicians and church people most likely), they had never had anyone interested in their entire archive before! I am planning on heading back there this coming week to look at more photos and see if I can track down an old mission journal published in French there (for use by the mission home offices in Quebec for fundraising) to see if they would have more photos and other good stuff. So work continues on in a winding, very-few-days-are-alike manner, but I am enjoying it still. Plus we got a little rain this week so green is starting to appear! Spring is always exciting.

Regional politics

I have been requested to give some thoughts on the political troubles in South Africa (for those who don't know the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) forced out its president about two weeks ago and people within the ANC, which was one of the main anti-apartheid liberation groups, are threatening to split off and form their own party). So, here goes. In my day-to-day life, I really don't hear much talk about this from Basotho, some chatter in the expatriate community here, but most of them watch or listen to too much BBC or CNN anyway! The Lesotho press (yes, there actually is some here and the quality of the English-language weekly newspapers is noticably higher than it is has ever been in my time here with choices for your news) had an interesting editorial page this week with a staff editorial telling South Africa to get its dogs in order because any instability there will hurt the region, and it is the smaller countries that depend on South Africa that will be hurt most, just as the exporting border regions of Mexico feel an American economic downturn faster than small-town and big-city Americans. Right next to that, however, was an analysis piece from a South African journalist arguing (again, correctly I think) that the ANC members who are threatening to form their own party don't have the grass-roots organization behind them to start a new party that will be successful. Despite the split in the ANC leadership, the people are still strongly behind the ANC and many would rather not vote than vote for the mainly ineffective opposition parties. There really is no one in the ANC right now who has the stature to move off, form a splinter party and bring people with him or her (except, of course Nelson Mandela, who at age 90 might just be the most popular ex-politican on the planet and certainly in South Africa...he could win any race he wanted, but he is also extremely frail and has no desire to do anything with politics). So, while the ANC has problems (both in its structures and leadership), it will likely continue to rattle off electoral victories, including next year's general election, without any real serious opposition (I don't know what the various opposition parties have, but it can't be more than about 35-40% of the Parliament combined).
On a very weird note with all this political turmoil (the ruling party here in Lesotho is threatening to split as well ahead of a Party Congress in January to elect new leadership) and the global financial meltdown going on around us, one currency the US Dollar is really strengthening against is the South African rand, so I find my purchasing power growing rapidly. Last week my dollar bought 8.2 rand while today the rate stands at 9.2. Crazy stuff that I don't claim to understand. Hope everyone is well and my political rambling didn't turn you off. I will post some pictures of my new house this weekend and get you back to your regularly scheduled programming!

42 Years of Independence

Well Lesotho celebrated its 42nd birthday yesterday (Saturday). It goes down here a little quieter than the 4th of July. The big national holiday is Moshoeshoe's Day (in honor of the 1st King), which is celebrated in March. For Independence Day, all the schools are out on holiday for a week, so there is more activity than normal, but around here people tend to do their celebrating only at month-end because that is when all the civil servants and textile factory workers (the two main sources of employment outside of subsistence farming) get paid. There is a big arts and cultural festival at a cute town to the south of Maseru and since the Ministry of Tourism and Culture (who runs the archives) is a big sponsor they closed down on Friday. So I decided (with a couple of other Americans here) to stay up and watch the Vice-Presidential debate on the satellite television. Besides, when else in life will I have the chance (or half the desire) to stay up for a debate that starts at 3AM???
So that was my 'American time' for the week. Otherwise, I had a good week research-wise. I stopped in at the Catholic newspaper offices and they said I could take a look at and make copies of their photographic collections from the 1950s and 60s (very exciting). So I told them I would come back next week when I found a scanner so I will be heading over there sometime this week. I also have an interview set up with a guy who currently teaches at the Teacher Training College who was heavily involved in youth organizations in the 1960s for this week, so I am starting to move beyond the archive, which is good. I have plenty of work to do there, but that stuff isn't going anywhere and the most interesting part of my work will come from interviews and photographs I can find, so it is good to have some of that going on alongside my other work.
What else? Spring is finally in the air here. We still haven't had the end-of-winter rains yet which means people can't really plow and plant (so people are starting to get nervous...they usually come sometime in September), but the last two days have been overcast (itself a rarity) and humid, so hopefully the rain isn't far behind. It will be nice to have all the fields and plants explode in green as well...the brown, dead grass of winter is getting a bit old. That's the news from here for now. Take care.

Well I thought I would try to post a short video clip on here. This comes from the graduation party I attended on Saturday. A woman I taught with at St. Rodrigue, 'Me Maboleba Kolobe (formerly 'Malerato Lehloka) just finished her master's degree at the National University in English. I had a good time at the party, which took up most of Saturday afternoon. The song you will see here was towards the end after there had been about 15-20 speeches by people from various aspects of her life, family, high school, college, graduate school, church groups, etc (including one by me on behalf of all the St. Rodrigue teachers since I was the only St. Rodrigue teacher who made it). I gave the first about 25% of the speech in Sesotho and then had to switch to English because I didn't get much of a 'heads up' that I would be speaking. So it goes. The party was a good time. All the people from the English Department who were graduating with post-bachelor's degrees were there so it was a full table. in the video, 'Me Kolbe is in her robe and comes dancing out from behind the table with her 2nd daughter (she has three) in tow (Kamohela is her name for those who know the family). The song is a congratulatory song that basically says 'this is your day and we are proud of you'. Enjoy! Another sunny day is coming to an end here. Hope you all are well.

Another week

Well, another week is down here. It really is amazing how time is starting to fly by now that I have most of the administrative details complete and am getting into the actual work. I tried to set up some interviews this week but was foiled by the busy schedules of the men I tried to get ahold of. Maybe next week! So it means that I spent most of my time at the National Archives picking through the records of the National Council (the advisory body that was partially elected and composed partially of chiefs...the precursor to a real legislative body) from the early 1950s. It can be interesting in spurts but as the books are about 650 pages each (the verbatim transcripts of the debates these guys held for the three weeks they met), it can also be quite tedious.
Still, it is good stuff and necessary to have for my future dissertation so I keep plugging away. The archives are quite empty other than me (I would say there in another person there looking at something maybe one out of every three or four days and those visits average under 2 hours).
This weekend is graduation at the National University (for those who finished in May) and there are four of my former teaching colleagues from St. Rodrigue who are getting degrees of some sort. Quite exciting. One of my friends is having her graduation party (for her master's degree in English--'Me Malerato/Kolobe for those who know her) on Saturday here in Maseru so I will be going to that. Another one (Ntate Leseli) is having his party (for a Bachelor's in Science) at the end of October at his home village up in the foothills so I have plans to get there as well.
I am staying connected and busy for sure. Life is good here. Hope the same is true where you are.

A grab bag

In terms of my daily activities, I can assure you that research in the field is not something for those who like routine. Sure I can have a few days in a row where I do the same thing, like Monday-Wednesday of this week when I spent most of my time at the National Archives digging through boxes of old letters and various correspondence between government officials and people in London, South Africa and Lesotho. Yes, I know how to have fun, especially as most days I was the only person there and definitely spent more time there than the archivist did.
However, today was completely different. As I am here on a Fulbright Fellowship I was asked by people at the US Embassy to sit on a panel that was to interview Basotho candidates for a Fulbright position in the United States. There were two US embassy employees (one Mostho, one American), a retired Lesotho ambassador to Denmark and a retired professor of Economics/former Fulbrighter from the National University. We interviewed five candidates who all wanted to pursue higher degrees (mostly PhD) at American universities and ultimately selected one. Then the embassy was kind enough to take the panelists to lunch and I now have, in addition to a nice free luch,two very interesting people to interview about what they were doing during the 1950s and 60s. You just never know where you will find sources for my project!
Tomorrow I will head up to the university for their Friday history seminar where members of the department give papers on their research. Then I will probably spend some time in the archive up there going through educational records. A heck of a week! Like I said I am hoping to start interviewing people next week to start the oral component of my project. It is kind of fun to have to figure out what my plan of attack is every day. There are always more places to check for documents and more people to contact. Spring is on the way here. We are just waiting for the first rains to make it green and allow people to start plowing and planting, but the temperatures have been (mostly) nice. Take care!

More successes

So a nice weekend is drawing to a close. Just wanted to let you all know some of the successes I have had over the last few days. The letter from the university finally came through on Wednesday of last week so I was able to pick that up and take it to Immigration to get my work permit for the year. I am legal to be here until June, which is nice. I also have an office at the university, so if you for some reason you happen to be at the National University of Lesotho, feel free to stop by Room 103 in the Institute of Southern African Studies and see if I am around. Chances are I am not because most of my time will be spent in the various archives and out in the country trying to find people to interview, but it can't hurt, right?
Otherwise, I have been doing some interesting research in the National Archives here. They don't have a lot on my time period, but some of the precursor nationalist movements in the 1930s and 40s that raised awareness among Basotho and lodged grievances against the colonial administration and chiefs here generated some interesting correspondence from the government and the chiefs. So I am spending some time going through those files and will go through the files of the National Council (the unelected precursor to Parliament here) for the 1950s and 60s to see what sort of issues they were discussing. All in all, interesting stuff for historians, but probably not too much for everyone else!
I have also been invited to the weekly History Department seminars at the University and went to my first one on Friday. Various members of the department present their work and the discussion is neat because for the first time in graduate school, I am completely surrounded by people studying African history. A real treat!
I am, of course, still running quite regularly. I put in about 50 miles this last week, which is pretty good as I am busy and Maseru is at an elevation of about a mile. I think I have adjusted well, however. Anyway, have a good week and I will post again when something interesting happens or the spirit so moves.

Wheels

So as you might be able to see, I have acquired a car. I have checked out the used car places here in Maseru and found this sporty little number that should get me where I need to go. I basically have it on a long-term rental because I will obviously not be taking it with me when I go. But, for now I have wheels on two continents! It looks all nice and snazzy, but is plenty old with over 200,000 miles on it, which is how I was able to afford it! However, it should get the job done as long as I can remember to stay on the left side of the road! Seriously though, it really isn't that hard to get used to, but driving the stick shift with my left hand will take some practice.
Otherwise I am still trying to get my work permit and visa arranged from the university. This car will allow me to get there easier to knock some heads if need be in the near future. I have also been spending some time at the National Archives here in Maseru which are nice for what they have (information up to the end of the 1930s), but aren't really that helpful for stuff on the time period I am looking at. However, the archivist called a bunch of ministries for me and they said I should stop by anytime and they will try to help. We will see, I will keep you posted. Well, it is a warm sunny day here so I am heading back out to get some more work done. Take care.

Ups and downs, strikes and gutters

Progress is a funny thing when living in a foreign country and trying to research in the field. I am often not sure what is going on around me or what I should be doing next as this whole 'research' thing is pretty much self-directed. The last few days around here have been complicated. I stopped by the university to check on the status of my paperwork that I had been assured the week before had been submitted (I am applying to be a Visiting Research Fellow there) only to find that it was still sitting on someone's desk and had only been submitted that morning. So instead of getting a letter that will help me get a visa and a work permit, I ended up in the archive there going through old colonial education reports (yea, I know how to live the high life).
Tuesday rolled around and I stayed in Maseru (the university is in a town called Roma about 40km by road from Maseru) doing some errands and working on some old research notes I had. I got a call around 5 PM from one of the secretaries who said that the paperwork had (finally) gone through and I should come the next day to take care of details and get the letters I need. Great! She also says I might get an office (an office?).
So Wednesday dawns and after my usual morning run I head out the door to catch the taxis that will take me to Roma. I roll in to find that the secretaries are too busy dealing with something else to help me today. "Thanks for your understanding." Well, I ask, when should I come back? "Maybe Friday." Never a good sign when a maybe precedes the answer around here, but hey, what else can I do? So I headed back to the archive there to bury my frustration in more colonial education reports (again, aren't I the high roller?).
So, we will see. Hopefully I will not have to develop superpowers to get these letters and my visa and work permit. I will keep you posted and will (hopefully) have some good news to report by this weekend or early next week. Until then, well, there are more colonial education reports waiting for me!

Why I am here

There have been some requests to detail what it is that I am doing here, so I will do my best. Right now, I am trying to take care of all the details when you move somewhere new overseas. I am still trying to secure a work permit and visa and a place to live. The photos above were taken from the house where I am staying. It is in a quiet neighborhood of Maseru called Katlehong. The sunsets, as you can see, are amazing.
As for my work here, I am doing my research for my PhD. I earned my master's degree in May finishing my coursework and taking my comprehensive exams. So now the 'only' thing left to do is to do my research and write a dissertation. I am spending my year here to get the research done. My project is looking at Lesotho in the 1950s and 60s as it transitioned from colonial rule to independence. I want to know how young people who were not necessarily involved in political parties viewed this process and what they wanted to see from their new country. I will be looking at how their views differed from their parents and where they did and did not manage to make their views heard.
What this all means on a day-to-day basis is hard to say. I will spend time in the archives around the country looking for documents and photographs. Much of my time, however, will be spent interviewing people who were involved in youth groups (church groups, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Young Farmer's Associations, etc) at that time. I already have a decent list of contacts that I will start getting in touch with when I get all my details nailed down.
I hope that helps give a better idea about what I will be doing here until June. Take care!

Life in the city

For the first time in my travels to Lesotho I find myself living in the capital city, Maseru. I am house sitting for a woman who is the country director of an NGO here while she is gone for two weeks. It is a quite nice place in a quiet part of town very close to where one of my good friends from my teaching days lives. It is close enough to walk to the government offices and stores that I need to get to, but there is a mountain in between so we don't have the noise and the hustle and bustle.
My life right now consists of trying to take care of a thousand and one details. I am trying to get a letter from the US Embassy to secure my visa. I am looking for a permanent place to live. I am trying to find a cheap car so that when I am going to archives and meeting people to interview I don't have to rely on the public transport which is slow and unpredictable. I am also trying to make my introductions at the various archives around the country and secure affiliation at the university. All-in-all, my days are full, although not really of research yet. That will come once some of these details are taken care of.
The house where I am staying sits on the side of a hill looking out over some of the Maseru suburbs and the gigantic stand where Pope John Paul II said his public mass when he visited Lesotho in 1988. The huge field surrounding it is still (as of right now) free of development and a wonderfully flat place to run, although like any place in Lesotho, I get more than my share of stares when I do so.
While I am house sitting I have internet access in the house so if you are looking to get in touch with me, the next few weeks would be a good time. I am hoping to have internet in the place where I eventually end up, but I need to find that first! Anyway, the peach trees are blooming a vibrant pink here so spring is on its way. Hope you are well!

Arrival

Hello all,
I just wanted to let you know that I have arrived safe and sound in the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. I have had some requests to post what exactly I am doing here and why, but I will save that for a later post as I have a lot to get done here on Friday before everything closes for the weekend. It has been great so far to be back...Lesotho feels more and more familiar the more times I come. I had great luck yesterday to be on the same flight as the Prinicpal Secretary (2nd in command) at the Health Ministry and an American who works for a health NGO here called PSI. Not only did we have interesting conversation but the American woman asked me to housesit for her for two weeks starting next week so I now have time to look for permanent housing and don't have to pay for it!
Later in the afternoon I was walking down the main street in Maseru (the capital) on my way to the US Embassy and I ran into some former students of mine from St. Rodrigue. It is hard to be incognito around here! Today I bought a phone so if you want or need to call me here in Lesotho, feel free. I can also receive text messages, which is a much cheaper option for you (as it is for me...if you hear from me it will likely be via Skype or text message). The number is: 5909 5486. The country code for Lesotho is 266. I bought this particular brand because my former teaching colleague told me they have the best coverage even up in the mountains and it works in South Africa as well. I will be testing both of these claims in the coming months!
After some big rainstorms overnight which made everyone happy because they can start plowing once the rains come, today is a bright sunny day. The highs will probably be in the low 70s and the lows tonight around 50 or maybe into the upper 40s. All-in-all, pretty nice weather for late winter in the mountains. Take care and I promise I will not be posted every other day all year!

Leaving on a jet plane

Hey everyone,

My bags are (almost) packed and I am getting ready to leave in the morning (Tuesday). I fly to Johannesburg (via Atlanta and Dakar, Senegal), spend the night there and then fly to Maseru on Thursday morning. I will keep you all posted when something interesting starts to shake down in Lesotho, but the first few days will be filled with mundane tasks like finding a place to live, buying a phone (Lesotho's country code is 0266 for those who wanted the answer to that trivia question) and start figuring out what sort of work I need to be doing. It will be late winter when I arrive so it should be pretty nice with daytime temperatures in the 60s and lows around 40. I am hoping that the snow is done for this year and that spring and the pink-blooming peach trees of Lesotho will be just around the corner. Take care on this side of the world and drop me a line every now and then and I will get back to you. Be safe!

First Hello

Welcome to my blog. I am writing this from 99-degree Saint Louis, MO deep into my preparations to get ready for my Lesotho trip. I just purchased my tickets today and will be leaving on August 19th. I will be spending about 10 months in Lesotho doing my doctoral research on African History. I will, of course, be posting much more about that in the months to come. For now, it should suffice to say that I am looking at the 1950s and 60s investigating the transition from colonialism to independence. I hope that many of you will comment here or email me to keep in touch. I should have a cell phone as well once I get there if you want phone communication. More to come soon...at least once I get to Lesotho.

For those who don't know, Lesotho is an independent country completely surrounded by South Africa.