Why I More or Less Stopped Writing (And Why I'm Writing Now)

Fine and you? [still my favorite Basotho English form of greeting]

So, I'm still alive and well. For those who have yelled at me for not writing on here in so long, I am sorry. I've been bad, I guess. It's been over 3 months since I hurriedly threw on a text-less post full of safari pictures (and just as long since I promised to hurry back with descriptions of those pictures). But I have some reasons, whose validity you can decide for yourself. In short, they are three-fold:

1. My daily life here hasn't been as jolly as it once was. I'm not suffering, per se, but it's just not so exciting. So I'm less motivated to come on here and tell the world about things like my sense of stagnation, my growing distaste for various aspects of work, and so on.

2. The honeymoon phase seems to be gone. In the beginning, no one (myself included) had much idea what my life here would be all about. But now, if you've been reading this blog at all since it started, you have a decent idea. So I'm sometimes reluctant to keep up writing. It sometimes feels like all I'd be saying is "Hey, look at me! My life is so different! Look at how different it is here!" But most people reading this already know that, so it has come to feel kind of self-indulgent to an unnecessary degree. Maybe that's all in my head, though, I'm not sure.

3. Many of the things I would like to write about would not win me many friends in the Basotho community. And as we all know, if you don't have anything nice to say...

But then, to be honest, that's an exaggeration. It's not that I have nothing nice to say. Far from it, actually.

So what prompted me to get back on the horse? A package I received recently from someone I've never met. A former Lesotho PCV named Becca sent me a package full of delicious foods, plus a very nice postcard. It mentioned that she enjoys reading my blog and encouraged me to keep on fighting the good fight. All in all, an extremely extremely nice, memorable gesture. Thank you, Becca. Your kindness will not be forgotten (and neither will be your exquisite Kraft Mac N Cheese).

I received the package in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, right after finishing a pretty irritating maths class. It immediately went from a bad day to a good day. And as I sat at my desk in the staff room devouring an entire bag of beef jerky in about 30 minutes, I contemplated what the package and the letter signified. I realized that this blog is perhaps more valuable than I can see. Which suggests that I ought to keep it up. So alas, here I am, ke teng.

With all that said, I have a lot of catching up to do.

But it will have to wait a little bit, because on Friday, my mom arrives to Lesotho. This is extremely exciting. We'll tour around a bit, and next week we'll fly to Cape Town so that she can see an incredible city and I can eat a lot and take decent showers for a few days. Also I'll run a half marathon on April 23rd.

So, provided the malaise doesn't hit me too hard, I'll be back soon.

Sharp!