Taking stock

Hello again. About a week ago I passed the 6-month mark of this trip. Summer is starting to fade out a bit here, although the unseasonable rains have made this one of the most comfortable summers I have ever experienced with daytime highs in the 70s and nighttime lows around 50. Good for running, good for work, good for living and the farmers! About the only thing suffering from all the rain is the topsoil which is eroding even faster this year and heading downstream to South Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.
So after another six months living in Lesotho, where do I stand? My work seems to be progressing well. I am gathering together a nice collection of very interesting interviews, most averaging an hour and a half of sitting and chatting. Having invested in a scanner my computer is also filling up with scans of newspapers from the 1950s and 60s along with photographs, election posters, anti-communist literature and other random documents that I happen to come across when I have the scanner and access to electricity. So work, while it does drag at times like when I am trying to get in touch with people who are not easy to track down or when I think about spending another day by myself in the archives digging through dusty boxes of yellowed, musty newspapers, would have to be called a success so far.
Socially, it has been a lot easier to find things to do then I expected coming here to live in a new city where, outside of a few teaching friends who have their own families, I really didn't know anyone. Through a series of fortuitous coincidences and random encounters I have managed to make some pretty good friends here and now keep as busy as I would like. I have also been running a lot, some on my own and some with two different groups--one a group of South African bank employees who are serious marathoners and ultra-marathoners, and the other a group of younger Basotho who are trying to make the jump from decent school runners into the ranks of those who could conceivably compete for cash prizes at some of the road races in Lesotho and South Africa. Both push me in different ways and both are a lot of fun to hit the roads, hills and trails of Maseru with. I will be running a marathon next weekend in South Africa to qualify for the Comrade's Marathon, which is a 56-mile (89 km) race between the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Needless to say, it is a big undertaking. It will go down in May, a little over a week before I leave to come back to the US.
Of course I still maintain contact with St. Rodrigue (the high school where I used to teach) and some of my oldest friends here in the country come from that connection. So on the whole, while I won't say that the time has flown by all the time, it sure surprised me to realise that I had hit the 6-month mark. I dare say the final three months will go faster as work gets more pressing and my departure date gets closer. Stay well.

Rain and theories

For much of the spring (September-November), many people in Lesotho were fervently hoping and praying for rain (some of the sisters at the school where I used to teach had gone for a pilgrimage to another mission to pray for rain when I went up there to visit back in August). People need it to loosen up the rock-hard ground after the cold winters here in order to plow and plant. They also need it to water the grass that the ubiquitous cows and sheep feed on. Lesotho is also just a much more pleasant place to live when the hills and mountains are green rather than the dull, dusty brown that comes with winter.
After much delay the rains finally came in mid to late November, about two months late but just barely in time for most people to still get in a decent crop for the year. We had wonderful summer weather for a few months, but in late January, it turned again. Since then we have had a period of fairly intense rain that is somewhat unusual for the region. Full days of rain. For two or three days at a time separated by a day or two of warm sunshine. This part of the world is known for its impressive summer thunderstorms, but not its full days of rain and low gray clouds.
It has made the summer not very hot. Many days here of late we are only getting up to 20 or 22 degrees C (around 70 F). Almost everyone I talk to has said that the rain is unusual and I agree heartily with them. No one can agree on causes, but many people have pet theories ranging from global climate change to the effect of putting two very large new lakes in the high mountains of Lesotho. No matter why it is coming, it has certainly breathed life into the fields of Lesotho and made the rivers, which can run to a trickle or even nothing in the winter, into raging torrents that flow over the low bridges built on the gravel and dirt back roads of Lesotho and take enormous quantities of brown muddy water and the topsoil of this country down into South Africa and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.
Stay well.

Around Lesotho

It has been a while since I have posted, but my parents were here for a visit. I don't really have anything profound to write. We had a great visit and it was a lot of fun to show them around Lesotho (it was their first time visiting the country). It rained a lot but that just made the back-country dirt/gravel roads more interesting! Fortunately we were not in my little car, but in something a little more powerful with four-wheel drive. The pictures here are just a few that I took. The stone house is the house of the first King, Moshoeshoe I. It was built in 1839 and is still standing on his mountain fortress, Thaba Bosiu--Mountain of the Night. The rest of scenery pictures. The waterfall is up at Semonkong, the 200 meter tall Maletsunyane Falls and the photo of the three of us shows St. Rodrigue, the school where I taught and which the BBC is currently documenting, in the background. Enjoy the photos and I will try to find something more deep and profound to say in future posts! Stay well.