Goodbye Lesotho

Paul Moliko, Blue Belt test - Shane's first student to be tested by him - he passed! Well done Ntate!

Shane wrapping up massage class

Boxing demonstration at our farewell party

My dear friend Maleshoane

Our beautiful neighbors and their beautiful children

Shane's counterparts

The Red Cross Bo 'N'tate dancing





'M'e Lineo o ithuta ho tsoka papa ka pitsa ntsoe



Bo 'N'tate cooking papa in the traditional pot



Matumelo and Magdelena cooking

 

Bo 'M'e preparing the feast





Hello Dear Readers,
We made it! Twenty six months with Peace Corps in Lesotho. We close our service tomorrow and become RPCVs officially. We left our site on Monday on the bus after a lovely farewell party from the community and selling/giving away the remainder of our worldy possessions of Lesotho. We are now in Maseru completing the seemingly never ending stream of paperwork that is Peace Corps and undergoing the poking and prodding torments of Peace Corps medical clearance. We fly out tomorrow.

I've already been reminiscing a bit on this blog about our service , so I may keep that to a minimum today, but here are a few things of note:

Games of Scrabble since entering Lesotho - 175
Kilograms of Peanut Butter Consumed - 52
Care Packages- 34 (Thank you all so much, they really did get us through the hard times and add the icing to the good times!)

Book Lists:
Shane -
The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Getting to Yes
Fast Food Nation
Small Wonder
Deep Survival
The Walking Drum
The Communist Manifesto
Born to Run
Half the Sky
Animal Farm
The Four Agreements
The Four Hour Body
Jiu Jit Su University
The Poisonwood Bible
The Tipping Point
My Stroke of Insight
Pathologies of Power
The Kite Runner
Gentlemen of the Road
Body by Science
Three Cups of Tea
Never Cry Wolf
Outliers
The Art of Getting Things Done
Ishmael
The Four Hour Workweek

Carol -
The Cat Who Sang for the Birds
Small Wonder
The Secret Adversary
Looking for Lovedu
The Places in Between
The Bookseller of Kabul
Mansfield Park
Mudbound
The Lacuna
Great Food, All Day Long
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
When the Emporer was Divine
Island Beneath the Sea
The Eyre Affair
Skinwalks
The Walking Wind
Animal Dreams
Making Aid Work
Texas (1,320 pgs!)
Enough
The Bottom Billion
The Shackled Continent
The Challenge for Africa
Listening Woman
The Paris Wife
A Buddha in the Attic
Running a B&B for Dummies
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
We Are All Welcome Here
Crossing to Safety
Man's Search for Meaning
The Ghostway
The Long Walk to Freedom
On Hundred Years of Solitude
Jump-off Creek
Never Cry Wolf
As We Forgive:Stories of Reconcilliation in Rwanda
Posessing the Secret of Joy
Say You're One of Then
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Flight Behavior
The First Eagle
The Cat Who Saw Stars
Conflict 101
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Pillars of the Earth (1,082 pgs!)
Dead Aid
King Leopold's Ghost
Private Peaceful
What Color is Your Parachute
Olive Kitteridge
Prague
Hunting Badger
Bringing it to the Table
World Without End (1,048 pgs!)
The Corrections

So, there it is the Peace Corps book list - that has also been fun, a lot of them, if I can say have had some further significance reading them here. Its kind of cool.

Here is a list of things I won't miss:
Bathing in winter in 2L of water
Public Transport
The Unreliable Infrastructure
Bureacracy
Poverty
The grocery stores
And a few other things...

And the short list of things I'll miss:
Basotho singing
The community/ our people!
Our cat
Sesotho
The kids
The birds
The sound of the livestock bells
Our mink blanket
Fruit trees (especially in bloom)
South African Wines
Blogging...
And so much more....

So with that - it seems that this will be our last post thanks to all of you who have been following, we've had over 10,000 pageviews in our two years! Enjoy the photos from our farewell party and we'll look forward to seeing you stateside!

Hugs from Lesotho (for less than 24 more hours!)

Carol and Shane