Saturday, January 24, 2004

We don't have a shower. We have a tub with a sprayer thing to wash our hair. It was a bit difficult at first, and I definitely got a little out of control with the sprayer thing, but by the end of the bath, I think I figured out a system that works pretty well, and best of all, we have HOT WATER!

Today we met with Dr. Mphu Ramatlapang who is an extremely intelligent and kind, mover-and-shaker kind of woman. Dr. Ramatlapang actually runs a private hospital about one hour south of here, and Bill says that it is the best hospital in the country. On Monday, Ramatlapang is taking us to the hospital and also to visit a school there with a good disabilities program (since Shelley is an occupational therapist). It was a wonderful meeting!

Later on, we went to the Lesotho College of Education (the route through which we are attempting to bring ARVs into the country). The college was beautiful, even if they could stand to pave just a small stretch of road leading to the college that would make transportation a bit more comfortable. Anyway, we got a very nice tour of the grounds. There is one building that has two stories and it had the most BEAUTIFUL view of the city with the mountains in the background.

We came back to Lancer's, where we'll be staying for the next month (VERY NICE!). Us girls decided to sit by the pool, yes there's a pool! But we don't think it has chlorine, so we decided to pass on the actual swimming. We were going to read, but we all ended up chatting, and I think I actually know what I'm going to do for my concentration paper, at least broadly. Both Sebina (from CHAL) and Dr. Ramatlapang had discussed rather passionately the issue of nurse shortages. This is a major problem for Lesotho, but also everywhere, and there are A LOT of related issues. I think it's a REALLY important issue right now EVERYWHERE, hopefully publish worthy.

After moving on to Bill's chalet for a glass of wine, us girls made some dinner, pasta corkscrews with tomato sauce, onions, garlic, and peas (because Arden saw someone shucking some in the street and felt moved to buy some), and I was in charge of the garlic bread. But we had garlic, not garlic powder. So I sautéed the garlic in some butter on the stove. But of course we had no basting brush to spread it on, at least not until I realized that I had brought 3 toothbrushes. Now we have an Oral B basting brush. Dinner was pretty good, but the fresh peas were pretty crunchy still, turns out we probably should have boiled them first. Oh, well, better luck next time. :o)

  Thursday, January 22, 2004

This was quite possibly the longest day of my life, in a good way. We met up with Bill and Arden (right) and caught up with them: Arden had been denied entry into South Africa on her way to Zimbabwe due to lack of pages in her passport and Bill had his plane (headed for Amsterdam) diverted to Glasgow due to a woman who may have had a heart attack on the plane, but Bill helped the woman and ended up getting 5000 free miles and a bottle of wine.

Our 30 seater plane from Johannesburg to Maseru was great fun and actually had pretty good food. The last part of the flight over Lesotho was beautiful. It was so rural. Even the more crowded areas still had only small one-story squarish houses. The houses were surprisingly sturdy for what we would call little shanties. The walls were cement blocks and the roofs tin with real window panes, although most cannot be opened. They build them to withstand the cold weather in the winters. But then we drove into the city, far from rural!


In then next 9 hours, we activated Internet accounts, changed money, went grocery shopping, made some grilled cheese that tasted pretty close to what we're used to, went to the Ministry of Health, met with the Principal Secretary: Ramotsoari, the Director of Primary Health Care: Tiheli (pronounced dee-HEAD-ee), and a health economist: Mapuseka, met with Sebina from the Christian Health Alliance of Lesotho (CHAL), and then ate dinner with Tebahoe (the former Lesotho ambassador to the US, Canada, and Brazil).

  Wednesday, January 21, 2004

My flights were fairly uneventful. Our wonderful travel agent, George, must not have understood that Shelley and I wanted to sit next to each other (which doesn't surprise me since he originally thought I wanted a three week layover in Johannesburg on my return trip), so we had some issues, but we were able to switch seats on both flights. I had the great joy of a center seat on the 11 hour flight from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. That meant I got to sit by 71-year-old, Scottish Harry. Harry and I had a wonderful first conversation:

HARRY: That other woman said she needed to switch with me since she had bad legs and needed an aisle seat, but my legs are bad, so I need the aisle seat.
ME: Well, it worked out okay cuz my legs aren't bad.
HARRY: Yeah, I noticed (wink, wink).

Harry was sweet, but the seat was not big enough for him, so his arm frequently rested on my table or his elbow in my stomach.

  Monday, January 19, 2004

In the words of John Denver: my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. Tomorrow is the big day! I only have 2 major things left on my to do list: 1) get a haircut and 2) buy knitting needles and yarn.

"Why knitting needles and yarn?" you might ask. It seems that Shelley (the student I'll be working and living with for the next four months) and I have some unusual things in common, among them the love of bowling and the desire to learn how to knit. Buck thinks it odd that two twenty-somethings share the interests of 70-year-old women, but I am very excited about it. So tomorrow I'll make my way down to "Putting on the Knitz" to buy me some needles and yarn...and perhaps an instruction book.

I've got nearly 20 hours of air-time ahead of me, and I'm hoping for some great plane movies since they may be my last for a while. The next time I post will be from Africa. WAHOO!