Wednesday, April 14, 2004

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!

AND HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, NIKKI!

And I’m glad your doing so well Pap Pap!

So today was yet another pretty busy day, but with the most fabulous ending. I spent the day making arrangements for a back-translation pre-testing group, setting up interviews for my thesis, working on the PSI referral system, attending a meeting at the College of Education, and checking out potential living arrangements for the next students. But today I stopped work by 7pm.

My friend, Gerhardt (Lancer’s Inn chef), returned from Thailand yesterday. So he decided to have a dinner party tonight! I am planning on going to Mapoteng for a week or two, starting sometime next week, so it was apparently in my honor since I will be leaving soon (even though it was really just an excuse to look at all the great Thailand pictures). Let me tell you that you would not even believe how tasty the food was. He made this incredible Thai feast. And after only three months in Africa, I managed to get a souvenir from Thailand! Gerhardt and Bertrand bought me the most beautiful sarong. They rock!

And besides all the wonderful fun we had tonight, the coolest part is that the very chef who cooked my dinner tonight is the same chef that will be cooking in the home of the King and Queen tomorrow in honor of the President of Botswana (whose entourage was just up the block from us today). Gotta love this place! :o)

  Sunday, April 11, 2004

We were all up before 6:30 and had the fire going and coffee cooking right away. We relaxed until about 8:00 and then we packed up everything into the cars. It only took about 30 minutes or so to get everything in place, and then we headed down to the restaurant to look at the only map available of the hiking trails in the area. We decided that we would hike out to the waterfall, so Daan copied the map as best as he could and then we set out. We got lost almost immediately, or at least thought that the map must be wrong, so we walked in the general direction hoping we would come upon the trail. All we knew for sure was that we were supposed to walk along a mountain crest. Well, we got to the base of the mountain and started going up. We continued going up...and up...and up until eventually we reached the top. But not before scaling some of the most incredible rocks...and wet ones at that...I thought we were going to lose Daniella at a couple points since she only had tennis shoes with very little tread. The view from the top was pretty amazing.



We walked along the top of the mountain and scaled some more major rocks, looking for the trail the whole time...until one of us looked down and saw it below us...on the CREST not the TOP. So that explained it, but it didn't really help the situation of how we were going to get to the trail. We had already decided that we were not going to go down the same way we had come up. After 2.5 hours, we made it to where the mountain takes a turn to see if we could get down easily on the other side of the turn. But since we had no such luck, we sat under a drop off and ate our lunch...trail mix, apples, cheese, and crackers...quite tasty.


We made our plan of attack and basically tried a few different routes before we finally found one we could actually do...even if part of it was going down on our butts and part of it required Daan lowering each of us down a steep drop and then us very badly helping Daan down afterwards. But it really was quite the adventure. And even though we could hear techno in the distance the whole time (mountains and valleys create quite the sounding board) we didn't see a single other human being during the four-hour trek. And until we got to a point where it was essentially ground level, we didn't even see trails. It was unchartered territory as far as I could tell.

After we finally had our feet back on solid ground with no steep drop-offs in sight, we were much happier and we went to the restaurant for cold drinks to celebrate (Sprites and Gingerbeer). Shortly thereafter, we headed back up to the cars and within 10 minutes were headed back to the border.

It was definitely not the way I would imagine myself spending Easter Sunday, but it was actually very appropriate to really experience just how big God is first-hand on a day intended to celebrate His greatest miracle of all.

I arrived back in Maseru around 4:30 and had the best bath ever. It was exactly the weekend I needed and definitely the most fun I’ve had since Buck left me to fend for myself a month ago.