Easy Tiger

What a great few weeks it has been. The weather is starting to get cold, but that has not curbed all of the action that has been going on in village. Lets try to summarize the past three weeks of my life…
BBQed, ate sheep, ate cow, at cow testicle… mushy but not bad.
Birthday party, many friends, good times.
Dart practice with police, up coming tournament soon, excited!
Another birthday party, more friends, more good times.
Threw an American football, got excited again.
Played wiffle ball, extremely excited.
Met an Italian who worked on dam, cooked homemade sauce together.
Frequently hang out with Italian, made breadcrumb fried trout.
Got paid by Peace Corps, finally, thanks.
15k walk for African Heroes day, inside tour of the dam, BBQ, party!
Continued work on bball hoops, still keeping fingers crossed, still excited!
Trip planned for Maseru for District Aids meeting, too much travel.
Built shelf for spices above stove, Bob Villa is jealous.
Toenail is growing back.
Ate KFC ice cream, delicious.
Starting exam testing, looking forward to break.
Namibia or Mozambique?
Went fishing for the first time, caught worms, no luck…
World Cup soon, want a ticket, Bloemfontein game hopefully.
Newbies arrive in a week.
Im getting old.
As you can see things have been busy. Sorry I didn’t go in to detail but I have a busy day of traveling tomorrow and just wrote down random stuff that came from my head. Hope you enjoyed the post and the pictures!

TCBing!

Well hello again! I will preface this blog post like all others and apologize for my lack of updates. With that being said what has been going on in my life. After the trip to Durban it was time to get back to work, which honestly was not easy. It was amazing to me that after less then six months I had forgotten about all of my modern day conveniences that I had left behind in the states. Unfortunately Durban quickly reminded of everything that I once had =) No worries though after a week or two back in my new home country I was quickly reminded of how I can live without them and with that as a mental comfort I was back to work. So what have I been working on? I have been put in charge of coaching our basketball team, which has been a lot of fun. Playing with the kids is great and the exercise is an added bonus I suppose. We make the most out of our practice facility, which is essentially a netball court. Think basketball without the dribbling and no backboards on the hoops. So my new pilgrimage has been to construct some new hoops for my Ballers, woot! I’ve made friends with the local welder who does work for the school and he has been great. Yes, he is the one who helped my dream of a BBQ come to fruition. Anyway he reminds of my dad. I showed him a rough sketch of a design I had and he went to work adding things and making sure all of my angles and measurements were correct. I was able to get an old pole from the school that’s 20ft long. My friend cut it in half and I had him weld on some plates we came up with to the tops of each. (See Photos) From the pictures you can see I also framed out the size of the backboard out of black scrap metal that was left over from student beds that were made from the boarding. My friend is going to mend all of that together and we will have two frames we can attach to the backboards when I get them. You can also see that I managed to snake two brand new Dunlop Basketball rims! The idea is that the metal frames will be about 3ft away from the pole. The frames will be holding the rim and backboard and will be connected to the main pole and attached at the metal plates we welded on. If my vision comes true they will look like NBA hoops but sized down for high school basketball. Anyway as you can tell we have been putting a lot of work into this and I am really excited about the outcome.

My big project that will take place in the near future involves a few of my friends who are in the CHED community health and economic development sector of Peace Corps. I have been picking their brains about building raised gardens and we have come up with something that is going to benefit the school and the children in countless ways. I want to build gardens throughout the school compound. My school has 5 forms A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, D, and E. These equate to 8^th through 12^th grade. I want each of these classes to have their own raised garden that will be monitored throughout the year by their class teacher. Why build these gardens? The first reason is to give all of the children in the school an additional source of nutrition. My school does a great job in feeding the kids, but additional sources of nutrition are always a bonus especially when you are dealing with OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children). It will also help the kids learn about gardening, which is something the agriculture teachers can use as an outside teaching tool. The class teachers can also have competitions to see which class can grow the most vegetables and give prizes to the ones who do the best. I have learned that competition among kids is great and makes them really try hard, its awesome to see how hard these kids work for a sticker, I can only imagine what they would do for some fresh vegetables. I was also thinking that if there are extra vegetables they can be sold throughout the year to fund other school projects. This project would also serve as a barometer for how my greenhouse project later down the road will go. The best part about the project is that its entirely free. They are pretty much built out of stones, some wood, aloe, old tin cans and cardboard. Materials of which can all be found right here in village! I have even talked to my friend who works with the UN WFP (World Food Programme) and she is trying to secure me a few hundred seeds of assorted vegetable species. Keep your fingers crossed this is a big undertaking, but I have the school staff and other support from other PCVs.

Lastly I am still trying to sort out problems I am having with the PC WWS (World Wise Schools Program). The program matches volunteers with classrooms abroad to classrooms in the US so they can be pen pals. The correspondent I was matched with has not replied to me so I have been sending emails to PC Washington and with not much nudging they are going to give me a new correspondence. My kids were really happy to hear this and I will let you know how their writing is. I will even try to post some of the questions and responses I get in a couple of months. I’m sure they are going to be great.

Day to day life here is going. Everyday I feel more confident in the work I am achieving and the direction that my life is going in. Last weekend we had a Thaba-Tseka sports weekend here and 5 other schools showed up. The competition was from Thursday to Sunday and the students competed in soccer, netball, volleyball, and basketball. Our school did pretty well and we are sending a couple of the teams to another qualifying match in two weeks. If they win that they get to go to Maseru to play for the national games, pretty cool. I need to get those hoops built so my team can really practice =) On Friday I organized another BBQ and collected money from a lot of the teachers around the district and bought another sheep. It was cool getting to meet the other teachers from around the district and see what projects and teaching methods they have been working on. Socializing here in Africa has not only been fun, but has also proven to be a great way to network with people, seriously.

I also want to throw a shout out to my fellow Thaba-Tseka friend Oz who is going home next week after serving his two years. We are gonna miss you bud. On a lighter note a baby threw up on me while I was on public last week, oh Lesotho. I made calzones. I made the best brownies in the world, thanks Mom for the Funfetti icing! I am getting really good at pool. That’s about all for now I will post some more random musings later when they come to me. Yes, it is getting super cold here and my masotho friend who doesn’t speak English hand gestured to me that he thinks that it will snow next week. He probably is better then the meteorologist in Florida lol. Love and miss you guys a lot. Khotso!

PS: My Students like to dance! Durban Pt 2 is coming.