Food Blog Within a Blog – CBT

So… if you aren't interested in hearing about the food here, just skip this post.

 

But hopefully you are.

 

Overall, the food has been decent. Some very good, some very bad.

 

The thanksgiving feast the other day was awesome, and those 2 bites of zebra I got were pretty special. Very tender, and the way it was prepared, the whole thing ended up tasting a lot like Jewish brisket. (Story: The guy who brought the zebra says he shot it at a legal game reserve in South Africa a few months ago. He donated 700 pounds of it to an orphanage, and kept the tenderloin in a freezer for a few months, before using it for thanksgiving. Pretty noble use of a zebra carcass.)

 

Makoeneas (Ma-QUEN-yahz) – Street/junk food. Deep fried "fat cakes," which is almost exactly like a giant munchkin, but served hot. Very tasty.

 

Papa – The #1 staple of the Basotho diet. Here's how you make it. Boil water. Add corn meal until it turns very thick. Stir it with a big wooden stick. Add a shitload more corn meal. The whole thing is now like a very thick dough. Cover, heat, and let the bottom almost burn. Stir some more – this now requires a lot of elbow grease. That's papa. It's about as exciting as white rice.

 

Samp – Another corn-based starch, but it's totally superior to papa. I love it. I'm not sure how it's made, but I think it is full of cream. Probably my favorite Basotho food.

 

Lesheleshele (Li-SHELL-ay-SHELL-ay) – A pretty common breakfast food. Hot porridge, made from sorghum. Nothing special, but very edible. I've started adding instant coffee to it just to give it some flavor. I don't think this is how the Basotho do it, but I eat it alone in my room so no one knows.

 

Bohobe (Bow-HOE-bee) – Basotho bread. Not totally sure how it's made, but I know it takes a lot of work, and it is steamed in a kettle. It is very dense, doughy, and served in thick slices. Pretty delicious when fresh, but merely edible thereafter.

 

Moroho – cooked vegetables – a pretty broad term. At our training facility, it's a mix of cabbage and onions and carrots, which tastes way better than I'd ever expect. At my CBT house, it is some sort of steamed and chopped greens. I don't know what it is that my 'Me ('Me = mother) adds to this to make it taste so awful, but it is pretty harsh. I think it might be sulfuric acid (only half-kidding).

 

Dessert – A common dessert this sort of layered dish, which has pudding, jello, pudding, jello, fruit, pudding, and graham cracker. Looks nasty, sounds nasty, tastes surpsingly good.

 

When you are sitting on a bus/taxi/kombi at the taxirank (taxi depot) waiting for it to fill up before departing (which can take a LONG time), you are continually offered to buy things by street vendors who walk around the area. The other day I bought a 4-pack of what is basically a sweet English muffin, for 3 rand (~$0.40). Delicious carbs.

 

Yesterday, by the way, my 'Me served me a lunch that was that H2SO4 moroho, papa, and some kind of sardine stew. My feeling of obligation forced me to swallow three bites of sardine stew, but after that I gave up. It is with full confidence that I say it was the most offensive food I've ever eaten. Sorry, 'Me Ilina. Anyway, afterwards I gave her a blanket "I don't eat fish," so I think I'm good from here on out.

 

Also, mutton is very common here. I've had it in chops, in cubes, and in a sausage. The sausage is the best. It tastes very much like lamb, only less good.

 

Aside from the above foods, I do eat a good amount of apples, bananas, salad, some pasta, chicken… "normal" things like that. Right now, the things I miss the most are pizza, buffalo wings, and bacon. I think pizza is #1. Oh, except for ice cubes.

Live from CBT (part 2)!

So, now you know a little about what life is like during CBT. But I have not discussed at all how super awesome it is living here. Maqhaka is a pretty spread out village. I live about 2/3 of the way up a mountain. Other trainees living here are about a 30-35 minute walk away, down the mountain, through the village center, past the chief's house, and then down another hill. I've seen where everyone else lives, and I honestly think I have the best housing situation of the bunch.

 

My family's property is pretty large (maybe ½ an acre?). On the property you will find donkeys, cows, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens (+ baby chicks), and ducks. The larger animals are penned in irregular brick rectangles, which somehow make it all feel classy. The birds/dogs/cats just wander around. The property is on a slope, and as you look down the angle of the mountain, the view of the valley below, and the chain of mountains beyond, is stunning (see picture below, taken from the side of my house).

 

My house, which I love, is detached from my host family's. It's surprisingly spacious, and it has a cone-shaped, thatched roof. The thatched roof is pretty highly sought after, both for its aesthetics and for the way it keeps the house cooler in the summer (tin roof = oven). I have a queen sized bed. Another trainees said his host parents literally gave him their bed, and are sleeping on the floor where their bed had been previously. I have not checked whether my host parents still have a bed, but it wouldn't surprise me… they treat me very well.

 

So, that's all well and good, but really the best part about living here is the Basotho kids. The stoop outside my door is one of the main hangouts for the little kids around the area. I have a few "brothers and sisters" of my own (somewhere between 3-7, not sure which ones actually live here, and which are just neighbors… it's hard to tell, just trust me). They are all completely in awe of me, they love to just stand and stare (see below). When I come home from the school or Sesotho class with my friend Adam (another trainee who lives next door), the kids flock to us, with huge grins on their faces. Some of the older ones like to try to speak to us in English, but it's very limited. We speak very basic Sesotho, roughly equivalent to that of the 5 year olds we meet. We try to find ways to play with them, by tossing a ball, or drawing pictures of common things and them teaching us the Sesotho words. Oh, and these kids LOVE my camera. They flip out every time I take their pictures. Man… the kids are so damn cute (see below – their names are Lerato, Refiloe, and Batiung). I'll definitely miss them when CBT ends.

Live from CBT!

(Entry actually written 12/1/09)

 

Lumelang (Good morning). It's Tuesday morning, 7 am, and I have a few minutes before I have to go to my first day practice teaching with real students. I am at Community-Based Training right now, which means I am living with a host family in my own detached house, in a small village, for 3 weeks. There's no electricity here, so what I've decided to do is to write quick entries on my computer, transfer them to a flash drive, then upload them whenever I find the chance to go to an internet café.

 

So, it's really nice finally getting outside the training facility for a while. I am in a village called Maqhaka (the "qh" is pronounced as a click, by the way), in the Berea district. My new name, so I'm told, is Mpho Moqasane (the q is a click here, too).

 

…

 

… OK it is now 7 pm. I had to run this morning, but now I'm able to write more, after a pretty long but very enjoyable day. As you probably know, I was brought into PC as a Math teacher (or Maths teacher, as they say here). As part of training, we spend 1.5 weeks practice teaching, with real live high school students as our audience (we pay them in cookies or chips). I'm now being groomed to teach both math and science. This is good news to me - I think teaching science will be a lot of fun. Today was our first day practice teaching. I had two classes today, one where I taught stats, and one the circulatory system. I was pretty excited for both of these, and both went quite well, especially for a first day. In the stats class, we compiled a data set by throwing a crumpled piece of paper at a target on the wall, and documenting how accurate students were. They had a lot of fun doing it. Unfortunately for them, the fun is over, and tomorrow we use the results to actually do math (evil laugh). They'll still get cookies though, so that's good.

 

So, a quick rundown of what today was like: Wake up at 5:30. Bucket bathe. Eat breakfast. Leave for school at 7:10. Teach, watch other PC trainees teach, come home at 1:30. Eat lunch. Go to Sesotho class, 2-3:30. Come home, play a Basotho game called moraba raba (something like Tic-tac-toe meets Chess meets Othello). Goof around with all the little kids who love to stare at me and laugh and play simplistic games. Plan lessons for a few hours…. And now I'm here. All that's left is some dinner, made by my host mother, and some reading in bed until I fall asleep.

 

It has come to my attention recently that long posts intimidate blog readers, so I'm going to cut this off here. I'll write more "later" in a separate post.

Lumela bo-me le bo-ntate!

Hello Ladies and Men! I am alive and well in Lesotho. I've spent almost the entire time so far at the Peace Corps Training Facility in Maseru. The group of trainees is great, and it has so far been a fantastic (though at times overwhelming) experience. We attend class each day from 8am-5pm, on average – topics range from safety, to culture, to how to teach, to how to speak Sesotho. Learning Sesotho is a lot of fun, but it's pretty tough. I am getting a little better at clicking.
 
Tomorrow morning I'll be moving to the Berea district for 3 weeks of Community Based Training (CBT). There I'll be living in my own small house, under the supervision of a host family. I'll spend the marjority of the time there practice teaching, continuing to attend classes, and getting to know my family and my village. I am told I will attract huge amounts of attention, particularly from local children.
 
I don't have much time now to recount many stories of my first 2.5 weeks of PC service, but I can say that I ate slow roasted zebra tenderloin last night at a thanksgiving feast/party. It was delicious. In other news, this country is beautiful, the Basotho people are exceedingly jolly, and they sing to us on a daily basis. Nothing makes a Mosotho happier than when you speak to them (usually poorly) in Sesotho. The HIV/AIDS problems in Lesotho are staggering – the 24% statistic you will read is a major understatement. The cultural views on AIDS are at times disorienting – I've heard that it is sometimes regarded as a conspiracy, and called "American Idea Discouraging Sex." I've also heard that one of the medications given to infected people has become very popular for recreational use. It is so popular that uninfected people borrow infected people's blood samples to fake having HIV, just to get the drugs. Or, even worse – they just infect themselves on purpose.
 
Sorry for that downer, I am really enjoying this country, and I can't wait till the training wheels start to come off. I gotta run, lots to do tonight getting ready for CBT and all. Hope to write again soon, and one day get to sit down and read my emails. Not sure when that will be… Hope y'all are doing well back home.
 
Also, if Dustin's mother is reading this, you've raised a very nice young boy, and he sends you his love.

 

Salang hantle (Be well)!