The title is again not a joke! Toilets are few and far between and good, bad or in between - they never have TP, so this is our new Lesotho survival strategy! We are now in week three of training and doing ok - so parts are harder than others. Our family is still really awsome! Sorry the photo thing hasn't really worked out so far, we are trying! We have done some cool stuff in the last couple of weeks, we visited two orpanages and a couple of successful businesses a jewerly making group for HIV/AIDs affected women that doubles as a health care plan http://www.grofoundation.org/. We also went to a successful weavers guild that takes mohair from start to finish - one cool thing was the bicycle tire spinning wheels! Today we hiked Thaba Bosiu where the Basotho nation was founded and we saw the grave of Moshoeshoe the first and second! We got our first care packages! Thanks so much to both moms! What a nice treat and we definitely felt loved! Thanks so much again! Please keep the chocolate and handsanitizer coming.
We also have been on some great hikes, we also gave the whole village we are staying in a nutrition lesson:-) and we had an interesting ag panel talking about the status quo of farming here: main crops, corn and sorghum, big problems - not being able to afford inputs also soil erosion is huge. I now also have a personal goal of learning to plow with oxen like many locals do! I also saw my first John Deere tractor on Wednesday! I have seen others, new holland, landini etc... this was the first JD. We got our site packets today and will look through those to "apply" for jobs and placement for the next 2 years. I am kind of hoping for quacha's nek where I visited before. Unfortunately any travel does seem to make me incrediably motion sick and that is pretty far out! We now hope to know where we will be placed by next Sat.
The King's bday is tomorrow and we are going to go celebrate and hopefully see lots of great dancing and traditional dress. We will have a pile of pics when we do get to post.
I'll stop rambling but we both hope all is well with everyone and all of our best from Lesoth!
Shane and Carol
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Udate from Peace Corps Training
Hello Everyone,
Thanks Sarah for commenting :) that is always fun to see.
So we are going to post some photos (hopefully) to show you a little bit of some of our experiences in training.
We just got back from visiting volunteers all over the country - I went to one of the most remote parts of the country - very close to the Sethlabathebe National Park. It was pretty cool! Shane went to the northern part of the country - so now we have two different view points of volunteer life in Lesotho. It seems like we will be finishing training in another 5ish weeks and then we will start our real life as volunteers!
We will let the pictures do the talking for now though!
Lots of hugs!
Shane and Carol
Thanks Sarah for commenting :) that is always fun to see.
So we are going to post some photos (hopefully) to show you a little bit of some of our experiences in training.
We just got back from visiting volunteers all over the country - I went to one of the most remote parts of the country - very close to the Sethlabathebe National Park. It was pretty cool! Shane went to the northern part of the country - so now we have two different view points of volunteer life in Lesotho. It seems like we will be finishing training in another 5ish weeks and then we will start our real life as volunteers!
We will let the pictures do the talking for now though!
Lots of hugs!
Shane and Carol
Monday, June 27, 2011
Ha ke na mata (it really does mean no problems)
Hello everyone!
Sorry it has been awhile since we have been online! But we have been in Lesotho since June 3rd. They took us straight from the airport to our training villages outside of Maseru, and we have not been able to get onto the blog since then. I really don't know where to start... so, when we got to our "training villages" (where we will live for about two months with host families until we swear in and go to our permanent site) with four other volunteers; as the Peace Corps vehicle drove through the village the driver started honking and everyone ran out of their houses and we all went to the cheif's house where everyone met and sang and the cheif gave a speech, and there was more singing. Then we got to me our host mothers (our 'me) and they were really excited and we were all really happy. Then we went back to our 'me's (pronounced may) house and they gave us Sesotho names and met the rest of our family. We are living in one room in a really nice house that is made of concrete, with tile floor and a nice sheet metal roof, it also has a rainwater collection system, a borehole/watertower, beautiful couch set and a dish with a big screen TV, but the generator isn't working right now so we all do not have power. Our 'me also has a huge garden, rose bushes and chickens. We are using a tin shack pit latrine with a wooden seat, and our life in buckets has begun! Every night we bathe in buckets and once a week we wash our clothes in buckets which is actually pretty hard and does take awhile.
Our family is so awesome! Our 'me is quite sophisticated and speaks very good english, our Ntate (father) works in a platinum mine in SA, we also have a married younger sister and a 14 year old brother who is also very cool. They have been really great to us and even threw me a surprise b-day party.
Our days have been pretty long, trainings are from 7:30am starting with Sesotho class and then we got to a different village with everyone else and learn about other safety, health and development stuff until about 4pm when we start the hour long walk home. It has been getting light at 7am and dark at 5pm. The weather has been pretty good, but definately chilly - and we are rarely very warm. The buildings are often colder than outside. It is frosting at night but there hasn't been snow - though we did have hail on the first Wednesday that we were here and with the sound on the tin roof we couldn't here anything the teacher was saying.
Lesotho is beautiful! The Basotho people are beautiful and for the most part very friendly. We have only been on two hikes so far because we have been so busy everyday with training, but I know more will come. We have also been eating a lot of traditional food - leshile shile which is a sorghum porrige just like malt-o-meal, papa which is a corn mush thing that is white with not a lot of flavor sort of like white rice and moroho which is a sauteed mustard green. We have also been eating other things but those are the most unique. I should probably wrap this up now. We've taken a bunch of pictures but we have to be really careful about not loading viruses onto our camera with public computers so I will post those later. We did get a cell phone and it seems like we can recieve calls from the states so please email us for the number if you'd like to call - we would love to hear from you, we are 8 hours ahead of MT and the current volunteers say that using an international calling card from the states is the easiest/cheapest way to go. We have also had people recieving letters and care packages - taking about 2-4 weeks so please use the address we posted to write to us! We miss you all, but we are having a good time so far. Please feel free to post questions for us to answer in the comments to help direct the blog.
Lots of love!
Shane and Carol
Sorry it has been awhile since we have been online! But we have been in Lesotho since June 3rd. They took us straight from the airport to our training villages outside of Maseru, and we have not been able to get onto the blog since then. I really don't know where to start... so, when we got to our "training villages" (where we will live for about two months with host families until we swear in and go to our permanent site) with four other volunteers; as the Peace Corps vehicle drove through the village the driver started honking and everyone ran out of their houses and we all went to the cheif's house where everyone met and sang and the cheif gave a speech, and there was more singing. Then we got to me our host mothers (our 'me) and they were really excited and we were all really happy. Then we went back to our 'me's (pronounced may) house and they gave us Sesotho names and met the rest of our family. We are living in one room in a really nice house that is made of concrete, with tile floor and a nice sheet metal roof, it also has a rainwater collection system, a borehole/watertower, beautiful couch set and a dish with a big screen TV, but the generator isn't working right now so we all do not have power. Our 'me also has a huge garden, rose bushes and chickens. We are using a tin shack pit latrine with a wooden seat, and our life in buckets has begun! Every night we bathe in buckets and once a week we wash our clothes in buckets which is actually pretty hard and does take awhile.
Our family is so awesome! Our 'me is quite sophisticated and speaks very good english, our Ntate (father) works in a platinum mine in SA, we also have a married younger sister and a 14 year old brother who is also very cool. They have been really great to us and even threw me a surprise b-day party.
Our days have been pretty long, trainings are from 7:30am starting with Sesotho class and then we got to a different village with everyone else and learn about other safety, health and development stuff until about 4pm when we start the hour long walk home. It has been getting light at 7am and dark at 5pm. The weather has been pretty good, but definately chilly - and we are rarely very warm. The buildings are often colder than outside. It is frosting at night but there hasn't been snow - though we did have hail on the first Wednesday that we were here and with the sound on the tin roof we couldn't here anything the teacher was saying.
Lesotho is beautiful! The Basotho people are beautiful and for the most part very friendly. We have only been on two hikes so far because we have been so busy everyday with training, but I know more will come. We have also been eating a lot of traditional food - leshile shile which is a sorghum porrige just like malt-o-meal, papa which is a corn mush thing that is white with not a lot of flavor sort of like white rice and moroho which is a sauteed mustard green. We have also been eating other things but those are the most unique. I should probably wrap this up now. We've taken a bunch of pictures but we have to be really careful about not loading viruses onto our camera with public computers so I will post those later. We did get a cell phone and it seems like we can recieve calls from the states so please email us for the number if you'd like to call - we would love to hear from you, we are 8 hours ahead of MT and the current volunteers say that using an international calling card from the states is the easiest/cheapest way to go. We have also had people recieving letters and care packages - taking about 2-4 weeks so please use the address we posted to write to us! We miss you all, but we are having a good time so far. Please feel free to post questions for us to answer in the comments to help direct the blog.
Lots of love!
Shane and Carol
Friday, June 3, 2011
In Johannesburg!
Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to let you all know that we had some flight delays and we are overnighting in Jo'berg and we made it through that crazy-long flight and we are officially in AFRICA!!!!! We saw beautiful sunrise and sunset from the plane and some great views of the Atlantic ocean... however, we are in desperate need of sleep at this time so we are keeping this short!
Lots of love,
Shane and Carol
Just wanted to let you all know that we had some flight delays and we are overnighting in Jo'berg and we made it through that crazy-long flight and we are officially in AFRICA!!!!! We saw beautiful sunrise and sunset from the plane and some great views of the Atlantic ocean... however, we are in desperate need of sleep at this time so we are keeping this short!
Lots of love,
Shane and Carol
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Last Day in America - in the birthplace of the nation!
Hello again,
We wanted to post a quick little update - we made it very successfully to Philidelphia, all of our baggage has made it this far too... we are taking this as a good sign. It is really hot and humid here (suprise!) it was forty degrees when we left Great Falls in the morning and when we flew in the pilot announced that it was ninety-one degrees here! Shane almost flipped:-) For staging we registered ourselves and just got Yellow Fever vaccines. We have been meeting some of our fellow volunteers and will have more icebreakers and briefings this afternoon. Yesterday we had a fun time taking a couple of hours to wander around the historic district of Philidelphia, it is very cool (actually hot!) but there were so many cool old buildings, cobblestone streets and beautiful gardens, we even got to visit the US mint here- so check out the new photo page for a few fun photos! We head out super-early tomorrow morning and then get on the super-long flight to Africa. Check in again soon for our next posting from "The Mountain Kingdom."
Sending our best to all of you!
Shane and Carol
We wanted to post a quick little update - we made it very successfully to Philidelphia, all of our baggage has made it this far too... we are taking this as a good sign. It is really hot and humid here (suprise!) it was forty degrees when we left Great Falls in the morning and when we flew in the pilot announced that it was ninety-one degrees here! Shane almost flipped:-) For staging we registered ourselves and just got Yellow Fever vaccines. We have been meeting some of our fellow volunteers and will have more icebreakers and briefings this afternoon. Yesterday we had a fun time taking a couple of hours to wander around the historic district of Philidelphia, it is very cool (actually hot!) but there were so many cool old buildings, cobblestone streets and beautiful gardens, we even got to visit the US mint here- so check out the new photo page for a few fun photos! We head out super-early tomorrow morning and then get on the super-long flight to Africa. Check in again soon for our next posting from "The Mountain Kingdom."
Sending our best to all of you!
Shane and Carol
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