For me, I spent the early part of the week bumbling around doing whatever I could find, but when Friday rolled around, bigger things happened.
A little background: when you drive around Lesotho, there are mountains every step of the way, and you often see writing on the mountainsides. People arrange white-painted rocks to write out things like "blah blah Barracks" or "blah blah High School." I've always found this pretty cool. So one day a few months back, it dawned on me that we should use this medium to make something like a PSA. I happen to live right by a perfect mountain right along the country's main highway, giving me a great opportunity to make such a "sign."
I decided to write "One Love Feela" with HIV ribbons. "One Love" is a big campaign in Lesotho that preaches monogamy and respect for your partner (multiple concurrent partners, or MCPs, are a huge contributing factor to the spread of HIV here). The "Feela" part is Sesotho, it kind of turns it into "Just One Love," though it sounds less weird in Sesotho than in English. At school, I teach my students "One Love Feela" as often as possible.
So I spent some time over the last few months planning and organizing to make this happen. This included finding a way to get funding for paint, getting approval from the local chief, meeting with the community at the foot of the mountain, coordinating with Phela (the organization that runs the One Love campaign, who were very excited to help), struggling to write letters in Sesotho, and so on. We finally set a date to do the project this past Friday. With schools on break, other PCVs could come help.
So five of my good friends came to my house the night before, and at 7am Friday morning, we climbed up the mountain and got to work. Two Basotho came too. We quickly discovered that the job was far too big for 8 of us, though, and we began hoping that more would come. We changed the plan to a simpler sign with larger letters, so that we would only write "One Love" with one ribbon. Then, over time, many more Basotho showed up - people from Phela, from Peace Corps staff, teachers and students from my school, and a number of villagers. Things took off, and from that point things went really well.
There were a few downsides. It turns out the red AIDS ribbon and the blue paint we used to write the word "One" (to be consistent with the campaign's logo) are less visible than white. Also the natural curves of the mountain obscure small pieces of the writing.
But overall it came out great. The response from the community and from Phela were excellent, and we had a lot of fun. And, no one broke any ankles on the mountain, which is slightly surprising. Following the event, my friends and I cooled off at my house for a while before spending the night braai-ing (aka barbecuing) singing and dancing in the late afternoon/evening.
When I wrote about building keyhole gardens at my friend Rory's place back in July/August, I mentioned how satisfying it was to spend time with volunteers both blowing off steam AND doing meaningful work. For me, this event embodied that idea to the fullest. Definitely a highlight of my service so far. And, I'm happy to now have a lasting piece of work to which I can stake my name and my service.
Well anyway, without further ado, here are lots of pictures from Friday.
View of the road and beyond, from the mountain, early in the morning.
Adam and I painting the ribbon (which turned out to be hardly visible... oh well).
Loads of people milling around working on various parts of the sign.
It's big.
As the work wound down, guys from the village took some extra paint and proudly wrote the village name on a huge boulder (note - the kid in the front in the yellow sweatshirt is Thabang, one of my favorite Form A students).
Rory, Thabeleng (a 7th grader at my school... seriously!), Nathan, and Dustin taking a breather after a few hours launching rocks down to us from the top of the mountain (seriously, amazing that there were no injuries).
Stopping for a minute to chat with Nthabiseng, a teacher from my school and my closest friend in my village. She helped a ton with the project.
Everyone celebrating the sign (and above all, hoping it will look good when we get down the mountain). At this point, all the Basotho in this photo have been shouting "One Love" down toward the village, to anyone listening, for hours. They're pretty amped up about it all.
Behold! Honestly this isn't the best picture... maybe I'll wander back and try to take a better one.
Relaxing at the braai - Nthabiseng, Bedtime Bear, Ntate Motlohi (another teacher), and Nathan.
Working the grill...
Rory, Dustin, Bedtime Bear.
Dustin, Shanthi, Rory. We returned to my house due to neighbors sleeping within earshot of the braai.
Oh, one final comment. There is a South African food called Braai Rolls that really should exist in America. They are just bread rolls stuffed with either garlic butter or herb butter that you cook on the grill. They are outstanding. So, to my friends at Tickled Pig BBQ - I know you don't win friends with salad, or even with bread usually, but I formally challenge you to come up with some American version of Braai Rolls.
