Sorghum Harvest Thrashing Circle

The sorghum harvest is an eerie experience and seems to be reminiscent of a time long past. We arrived soon after sunrise to the field that we would harvest. The sorghum had been cut and piled the day before. Each man comes with his own club, most of which are the bases of small trees with a bit of the stump still attached. The men talk and deep low voices as we wait for others to arrive. Once enough have arrived one man begins to sing slowly in a deep baritone. We pick up our clubs and begin to circle the sorghum as others join in the song that reminds me of a galley being rowed to the beat of drum in Roman times.

We all raise our clubs together and bring them down at once making a loud “whump”. We then move a bit to the right raise our clubs high and let them fall in unison, “whump”. All the men are singing low and softly now, but the rhythm stays slow and steady. After about 5 minutes I discover the trick of the club. You only raise it up, but don’t throw it down. You swing it over your head and let it fall with its own power. After 15 minutes one of the grandfathers falls out and another comes to takes his position in the thrashing circle. We continue on until all the sorghum is flattened and thrashed. There is a discussion as to when enough is enough, and when the owner of the sorghum gives a definitive answer we break apart and regular conversation begins again.

The work of the men ends here. They sit and drink Sesotho beer and eat papa. The women come in to separate the grain from the chaff. It’s a windy day. They lift the grain and chaff above their heads in basins and poor the grain onto an outstretched tarp. The grain falls solidly and the chaff blows away with the wind.

After everything is finished good times are to be had and we all catch up on our village gossip. The sorghum will be used next year to make morning porridge (lesheleshele), a porridge drink (motoho-this is my favorite Basotho food), and Sesotho beer. The harvesting will be done like this at everyone’s field in the village until all have brought in their sorghum.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
2 August 2009

Lesotho Winter Flowers

My winter flowers have started to come in nicely. I planted them just before it began to get cold, and they have been coming along little by little. I put in mostly hearty perennials in the hopes that whoever has the house after me will be able to enjoy some color. They certainly aren’t as brilliant as my summer annuals, but any color is good color.

I also bought some lily bulbs the last time I was in South Africa. They won’t flower until spring or summer, but hopefully they will before I leave.

The picture shows some of the flowers blossoming while there is still snow on the ground. They aren’t really affected by the cold at all, except for slow growth.

I think gardening is something I will continue to do wherever I end up after Peace Corps.

Andrew Dernovsek
August 1, 2009

The Night Ride

29 August 2009

Life is never what you expect. So why should death contain anything but the unexpected? Whether it is for the deceased or those left behind, it brings something unique. You would think after 2 years one would become accustomed to the funerals and the death. In fact, the opposite is true. Each time I visit a family, a friend, it compounds upon the pain of those already lost. Each time someone dies another brick is added to the pile of despair and instead of creating a feeling of numbness and separation at seeing so many bricks in the pile it instead draws a person into the desperation of the massive pile of bricks. But of course on the outside everything is business as usual.

After I heard the news, I went as I have so many times already this year, to pay my respects to the deceased and his family. It was a sad, yet inevitable death. The man was young, and had come home to Mafikeng to be with his mother and die. I saw him outside many a morning wrapped in a blanket and lying in the sun. He had been in the advanced stage of his illness and he appeared in his final days as if he was just a ghost, a shadow walking the world of the living.

My rondoval is in the bottom of the Qomo-Qomo valley, and most of the village is located above me. Every few days I make my rounds around the village to inspect projects, find out any news, and look for new opportunities. I was on my way up to the top of the village where my widows run a solar bakery. I wanted to inspect their accounting books and see if the business was running smoothly. As I made my way up, Ares and Aegis, my faithful companions, darted up and down the mountain looking for trouble, or maybe just a nice discarded bone to chew on.

It was coming to afternoon; the sun would soon be behind our mountain leaving us with a few hours of shade before darkness finally came. I noticed what appeared to be a pile of blankets next to a mud rondoval, heaped in a pile and filthy. An old woman sat slowly stirring a large black kettle and tending a small fire below it. She was probably in her fifties, but looked much older. The environment and the hard living here seem to make people age much more quickly. I greeted her in accordance with custom, “Hello, mother. How are you living?”

“I’m living well,” she replied, “and you father, how are you living?”
“Good, thank you,” I said.

The pile of dirty blankets suddenly began to stir, and I realized that someone had been hidden underneath them. The blankets lifted, and for a brief moment my eyes made contact with those that had been hidden. I could see naught but his eyes. They peered inquisitively at me. They were dark, sunken, and sad. As quickly as they had come, they disappeared. The blankets fell back into their crumpled unmoving state. I made my way up the hill to continue my business with the bakery not giving the eyes much more thought.

A few days later I happened by the house again. This time there was a man sitting up next to the house. Was it a man? Or just a shadow, a whisper. The blanket hung over his shoulder now, his bare flesh exposed to the winter sun. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten in months. Every bone in his body was visible and protruded outwards into the exterior where they weren’t meant to be seen. His cheeks were hollow and his hair was tangled and stood in clumps about his head. His arm, was that his arm? It looked like that of a child. There was no muscle visible, only bone. I greeted him, but he was too weak to respond or even to change his expression.

Aegis, Ares, and I continued on our way. Later, his mother had told me, that he had mused after Ares and Aegis. He had said that surely they were being fed bread and milk, exotic goods here in the mountains. He had asked his mother if she thought I would give him one of the dogs. She had hung her head and turned away not wanting to show him her tears or tell him the truth that it didn’t matter as he would be gone in a few days.

The next time I looked at the house, I knew in an instant that death had finally taken him, the man with sunken eyes. Several cooking fires were burning around the house and an inordinate amount of people were gathered outside. I checked my garden, as I have so many times before this year, to see what I could bring to help the
family.

I gathered four bunches of potatoes, about twenty in all, and slowly made my way to the rondoval to pay my respects. I had my meager offering of potatoes, but I have found that in a land with no money and little food sometimes all that is to be done is to sit with the family and share their pain. As I approached the house I customarily greeted those gathered outside. I asked where the man was, and they pointed inside of the second of two rondovals. I gathered my thoughts, my Sesotho, and my composure, took a deep breath, and stepped into the single room.

Five women were sitting on the dirt floor crying; in between the women hung a sheet covering the deceased man. I hung my head and greeted them in a low whisper of a voice. I asked about the man, when he had died, when the funeral would be, and what arrangements had been made. As we made conversation they stopped crying. I told his mother I wish I had made more of an effort to speak to him while he was alive. She then told me about how much he had enjoyed seeing me and my dogs. She told me he was absolutely convinced that the dogs were being fed bread and milk because they were so fat. They had laughed about it, and as she told me the story she smiled and laughed again.

After she finished talking we all sat quietly and reflected. I got up and handed his mother my potatoes. She was very thankful, almost too thankful. I looked around and noticed that not much food had been brought by others. Perhaps it was because the man stayed at another village and had only come home to die. As I looked around at some of the food that had been brought I asked his mother if anyone had brought cabbage yet. She replied that they hadn’t. “I don’t have very much in my garden,” I said, “I gave the garden to the Primary School this year. Is anyone at the village selling?”

“No, I don’t think so,” the man’s mother answered.
“How about Ha Nohana?” I asked.
“We’re not sure,” the women said collectively.
“I see some cabbage down in the valley,” I said. “Isn’t that being sold? It’s not? Well, I’ll have to go get some anyway.”
“How will you do that?” they asked.
“I’ll just go at night,” I said flatly.

They all erupted in laughter. I certainly didn’t mean any disrespect, but sometimes I slip in a joke accidently. It was wonderful to see them laughing, I see too many sad faces here. I guess the idea of a white man sneaking down into the fields to steal cabbage for them at night was too much. I told the women that if there was anything they needed from me they shouldn’t hesitate to ask. I always do mean it, and as it turns out they were going to take me up on my offer.

I went to the family the next day to tell them that I had not been able locate, or steal, any cabbage. The man’s brothers were there and had forced a change of plans. The man died on Wednesday and it was now Saturday. The men, however, were adamant that he be taken back to his mountain village of Ha Lephoto. We don’t have cars here, and if we did they couldn’t reach Ha Lephoto. The only way to get to Ha Lephoto is by horse.

We brought saddled horses, and prepared for the ride of the dead, the night ride. His brothers picked him up and put him in his saddle, to ride one last time. We tied each leg to a stirrup and tied ropes around his back midsection and arms, and connected them to the ropes attached to the stirrups. It took a while to secure him tightly, and in the end he sat firmly in the saddle, but slouched over next to his horse.
One of the men from the village asked me, “Don’t you want to take a picture?”
I always carry my camera, but wouldn’t normally bring it out at a time like this. “I have it,” I said, “but I wasn’t going to take a picture. Won’t his family be angry?”
“No. Please father Thabo. Show them how we live here. Show them how we live hard in Lesotho.”



After the picture, I saddled my horse, and prepared to escort them to Ha Lephoto. You might think it an unpleasant experience, and it was, but in truth there isn’t a person who hasn’t thought about where he wants his final resting place to be. We were simply honoring the dead.



As if to complete the gloom, the clouds rolled in. Ares and Aegis came along as escort. I like to think that the man would have enjoyed the fact that the two fat dogs fed on bread and milk were part of his final escort. We rode. It got dark around 1830, yet we rode on. It rained at 2015, yet on we rode. Indescribable. There are some things that shouldn’t be talked about, and other things that can’t be talked about. The night ride was both. I have the words, but I won’t write them. It was horrific yet wonderful, heartbreaking yet uplifting. It was the night ride.

I couldn’t stay. The clouds lifted, and I left the caravan at Ha Lephoto and opted to just turn around and go home. The moon lit my way home, and I arrived home with Ares, Aegis, and Leluma just before dawn. It takes an exceptional amount of love to take your brother’s rotting body home in the night rain to be buried. When you are encircled by despair, death, utter hopelessness, and loss all things are eventually stripped away. Two things remain and stand alone, God and love.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

Master Hunter, Watchmen and Me

I haven’t updated you on my family for a while, so I thought I would. They are all healthy, rambunctious, and coming into their own. Katse is still the master hunter, and the envy of everyone with rats in the village. Yesterday she pulled a rat the size of my outstretched hand (not including the tail) out of one of the teacher’s houses. He was literally jumping up and down with joy and thanking me because it had been bothering him for months. We were all amazed that the rat was about the size of Katse’s head, but it didn’t give her any problems.

It’s been very cold this winter. The house is pretty warm, but both Katse and Ares figured out that my bed is significantly warmer then the floor. As soon as I blow out the candle at night, Ares vaults up onto the bed where he sleeps above the covers.

Katse on the other hand gave me a good laugh when I woke up to an especially cold morning and found her curled up next to my stomach. She adds extra warmth, so I didn’t kick her out. I’m just afraid I’ll roll over and kill her one night! And yes, they’ve all got ticks, but not as many as they get in the summer. I try to pull them all off, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before I get a few myself.

Ares and Aegis have also turned into quite the watchmen. They have become a good mix of friendly American style dogs and Basotho guard dogs. Animals almost never come near my house anymore, and shepherds also shy away. The dogs know ‘my area’ and as soon as they see an animal or anyone carrying a stick they go for it. The shepherds are usually the ones who throw rocks at them and hit them with their sticks, so the dogs have begun to identify where the pain comes from. Now when they see a shepherd they don’t wait for a projectile to come their way, they go in for a preemptive strike. They both bite, and they are not bite trained so they bite hard. However, they only bite when I tell them to or when they become actively threatened (someone throws a rock at them or hits them with a stick).

They are both still very gentle and playful with Katse and the school children. The boys love to play football with them and the girls play net ball with them. They do understand the difference between shepherds, school children, and animals. As soon as the sun goes down though all bets are off, and they guard our area with tenacity.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
18 July 2009

Diamonds of Ketane Solar Bread Bakery

The Diamonds succeeded in baking their first loaves of bread today, using only the power of the sun. We were all very excited and celebrated by testing the first few loaves ourselves. Believe it or not, it tasted like bread.

Everyone in the village and the surround has been wondering what the giant metal thing is, and they are all very excited about the prospect of having bread here. Even I am looking forward to mixing up my diet a bit.

The widows have been working hard, and it really seems like soon I will be able to untie their wings and let them fly free. They are still making popcorn, and people are still buying. I am now teaching them basic accounting and record keeping, the final step. Once they have mastered that, I will step back and observe from a distance only stepping in to assist when necessary.

Thabo Nohana (Andew Dernovsek)
11 July 2009

Diamonds of Ketane Receive Solar Oven

The solar oven arrived today! We are extremely grateful for all of your generous support. The Diamonds of Ketane (the widows) are in disbelief of your generosity; they are forever grateful for the gift you have given them. It is as amazing to me as it is to them that we are now able to bake bread with the power of the sun. Here in Lesotho it is not simply an oven, it is a means of survival. It is the difference in their lives that will put food on the table at the end of the month and allow them to work for themselves with dignity.

I wish that you could see them as I see them: women who have for decades been trampled on by life yet are not down trodden, women who have suffered yet never a complaint is heard, women who have endured great loss and have had their land taken yet still wake up each morning and try to find some work, women who have had more than their share of sadness yet greet each day with a smile, women who have found the gift of life, sustainability, and a means of survival in a solar oven. The widows and I send our thanks and gratitude.

Our first step was to cement the oven in place. I had them dig out a big whole and gather rocks and sand last week. I showed them how to mix the cement, and they were able to do most of it on their own. We poured the foundation and put the support pole in place. In 4-5 days the bakery should be all ready to go.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
6 July 2009

American Independence Day in Lesotho

I am proud to report that we celebrated the 4th of July in style here in Lesotho. I think the feast must have been at least on par with many American parties yesterday. We kicked things off around 3, and had a good number of people.

The order of events was typical of a Basotho feast. Our village priest (not to be confused with the church priest) opened and closed the ceremonies in prayer, as we do all events here in Lesotho. Then the speakers began, as follows: a prominent man from the village, a prominent woman from the village, a teacher from the school, me, and the chief.

First, I give my speech for my Basotho readers:

Lumelang Bo’me le Bo-Ntate,
Ka nete Ke thabile haholo ho le bona kaofela kajeno. Kea le amohela koano letsatsing lena la bohlokoa. Ke batla ho leboha boteng ba lona koano letsatsing lena ho tla thabe le’na. Tsatsing lena re keteka le ho fana ka liteboho boipusong ba America. Hape tsatsig lena re tlotla bahahle bohle ba Americaba ileng ba re shoela hore e be re phela ka bolokolohi koana Amerika.
Ka 1776 America e ile ea phatlalatsa boipuso ba eona ho tloha ho Brithani, me banna ba 50,000 ba ile ba shoa. Tsatsing lena Amerika e na le lilemo tse 233 e fumane boipuso. Re tsamaile tsela e telele e thata ho holisa naha ea rona, ‘me re se re atleha ho thusa linaha tse lina ho fihlela titoro tsa tsona tsa tokoloho le boipuso. Ho tloha Amerika e fumane boipuso, Ma-Amerika a mangata a lahlehetsoe ke bophelo hore le linaha tse ling li fumane tokoloho. Ba lahlehetsoe ke bophelo ho lokolla bokhoba ba Ma-Afrika naheng ea Amerika. Ma-Amerika a shoele ka boongata ntoeng ea tokoloho ea linaha tse kang England, Germany, France, etc. Hape haufiinyane mona sebakeng sa Somalia, Afghanistan le Iraq. Tsena ke linaha tse fokolang. Ma-Amerika a lahlehetsoe ke mali bakeng sa linaha tse fetang a mangata hore li fumane tokoloho e tsoanang le litokelo tsa mantlha tsa botho. Tsatsing lena re tlotla boitelo ba banna le basali bao le ho bohle ba ileng ba loana. Ka tsepo ea ho fumana tokoloho le teka-tekano ea batho bohle. Joalo ka ha re le Lesotho mona tsatsing lena, ha re se k era lebala Basotho ba ileng ba loana ka mekhoa e fapaneng e mengata ho lokolla Lesotho. Joale ha re ketekeng lebitsong la tokoloho le teka-tekano ho batho bohle. Hape ha re batleng tokoloho: khahlanong le HIV/AIDS hap re hopoleng bohle ba ileng ba oa moleng oa ntoa khahlanong le toantsong ea HIV/AIDS. Ha re hopoleng hore ho fumana boipuso khahlnong le HIV re tlameha ho ila thobalano fo fihlela lenyalo, hape re tsepahalle lenyalo. Re arelelane ba moetle oa lona lilemo tse peli. Tsatsing lena le na ke arolelana moetlo oa ka hammoho le lona.
Khotso! Pula! Nala!

(Now, my speech in English)
Hello Mother and Fathers, It is true I am happy to see you all today. You are welcome to be here with me on this great day. And I want to thank you for coming today to celebrate with me. Today we celebrate and give thanks for American Independence. Also, today in America we honor all of those who have died or fought so that we can live free. In 1776 America declared its independence from Great Britain. 50,000 men died to win it. Today America is 233 years old. We have come a long way in our young country's life, and we are now even able to help other countries achieve their dreams of freedom and independence. Since our independence many Americans have given their lives so that not only Americans but people of all countries could live free. They gave their lives to free the African-American slaves. They gave their lives to fight for the freedom of England, Germany, France, etc. and recently in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This is just to name a few. Americans have spilled their blood on the land of many countries so that those people can enjoy the same freedom and rights of humanity that we enjoy. Today we honor the sacrifice of those men and women and give thanks for all those who have fought with the hope to find freedom and equality for ALL people. As we are in Lesotho today, let us not also forget the Basotho who have fought in so many different ways to keep Lesotho free. Now let us celebrate in the name of freedom and equality for all people. Let us also seek our freedom from HIV/AIDS and remember those who have died in the fight. Let us remember that to gain our independence from HIV we must abstain until marriage and remain faithful in marriage. I have shared your culture with you for two years. Today I share my culture with you. Peace! Rain! Prosperity!

Honestly, it felt wonderful to wave my flag again after two long years. The people enjoyed hearing about America, pointed out our mutual Independence from the same empire. One man commented that Lesotho is still young, and if they work hard they can still have prosperity like America.

We moved onto our traditional feast, which was wonderful. Following that we had music and dancing. The women did one traditional dance as did the men. Also two men gave a molamu (stick) fight demonstration. I got it all on video, and if I ever make it back to Maseru I will try to post it.
When the lights started to fade I started a big bonfire and had a slide show of pictures of my home in America and then of Lesotho. I then pulled out my crowning achievement. A friend in Maseru helped get me some amazing airborne fireworks. I was able to show the Basotho something most had never seen before, and it truly made it a feast to remember.

We then watched a movie and in Cana fashion I pulled out all the best pieces of meat that I had secretly saved and we had a big nighttime barbeque for all those who stayed late.

It was a wonderful day for me and for them. Although doing everything American made me very homesick, it was great to share my culture with the Basotho for a full day.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
5 July 2009

Hoisting the Red, White and Blue

I have decided to hold a feast in honor of American Independence Day this 4th of July, 2009. A celebration, right here, in Ketane, Lesotho, just outside my mud hut.

I have been preparing for the last couple of weeks, and the arrangements are well underway. The widows, the “Diamonds of Ketane”, are helping me with all of the logistics, i.e. cooking everything, and a few men from the village will help me prepare the meat.

Most of the area has been invited, and I am expecting a good turnout. The news that I (the white) am holding a feast has created quite the buzz around the village; the people are very excited. For the feast we will have butternut squash from my garden, cabbage, papa (cornmeal), flavored drink, 1 drum of local drink, mutton, and other various Basotho feast items.

I have had one ram up at a mountain village for quite some time, and I bought another one for this occasion. We will slaughter both the rams the day before the feast. Also, I brought my big American flag out of hiding, and put up a flag pole in my front yard. As I have surrendered most of my culture for the past two years, the red white and blue have never looked so good to me.

The widows also started cooking today. It is a lot of work, but we have been having a great time. They are teaching me how to cook some of the very traditional Basotho dishes and we have been having an American-Basotho music exchange. I made up a Sesotho song about each one of them. I of course sang them in my off-key monotone voice, but they loved it. It is all smiles here at Ketane as we prepare for the 4th.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
1 July 2009

Corn Harvest Prediction: Bleak

I am becoming increasingly worried about our corn harvest this year. Corn (maize) is the staple food here in Lesotho. It is dried and then ground for preservation. It is mixed with water to make what the Basotho call ‘papa’ or cornmeal. We had a very odd and sporadic rainfall this year. Heavy rain came early in October. It then rained periodically, but not regularly throughout the growing season. Finally, we had heavy rains late, after the growing season. The weather has left our corn looking like this:

As you can see it does not look good. The farmers that I have talked to were worried, but seem to shrug it off. I suspect that they have had to deal with far worse harvests than this one. Still, I don’t see how the present crop can maintain the people until the next harvest.

On an interesting side note, the farmers predicted that because of the irregular rain fall (heavy early and late) that it will be a very cold winter. So far they have been completely accurate. It has been much colder than last winter. We are also expecting a decent amount of snow. I have five blankets and a hot water bottle, so hopefully I will be prepared!

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
15 June 2009

The Losses Mount

The struggle continues here in Lesotho. We lost our area Roman Catholic deacon this week. It was a difficult loss for the people of my village and has compounded a very harsh and disheartening winter.

For the past few months we have buried close to one person a week. I’m not sure of the exact number, but I have attended more than a dozen funerals this year. The people were of all different ages and came from many different walks of life.

Our deacon was always a friendly face to me. He was one of those Mosotho who could never quite understand my Sesotho, however, we always had pleasant interactions which he typically initiated with a big smile.

His family said that he succumbed to TB. It is not known (or shared), whether he was HIV positive, but TB is an opportunistic infection that attacks many HIV positive people here. Additionally, we have the burden of being an area where Multi-Drug Resistant TB and Extreme Drug Resistant TB are found. Regardless of the cause, it was a great loss for our community.


He was buried in the traditional style, but at the church cemetery. The priest was not present so another area deacon came to officiate. After the funeral, we went back to the family’s house where we shared a final feast in his honor.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
10 June 2009

Ketane Winter

Platonic Dialogue on Faithfulness in Lesotho

Today I had one of the more difficult HIV/AIDS discussions during my time here in Lesotho. The shepherds may still have been my most difficult group to talk to, but today I was really challenged.

I was challenged in such a way that although I believe I gave a good message I felt ashamed of my culture, which for those of you who know me is an extremely rare occurrence.

I have always taken my HIV work here very seriously, and me being myself I never pass up an opportunity to give my HIV talk whether it’s at a village meeting for dozens or just to a few people I’m walking with. Today I struck up a conversation with a few construction workers from Maseru. They turned out to be not only very knowledgeable, but especially informed about western (American) culture.

I started off by poking fun at a door they had bought, which they agreed was imbalanced. As usual they were very curious to know about my wife, girlfriends, and sex life. I took the opportunity to give my standard HIV message on the importance of loving only one woman because they were married men. They had a myriad of good arguments most of which questioned my culture, and the fact that it wasn’t really any different than theirs: why should they be restricted to one woman if they wear condoms?

This is what I am seeing more and more of with men who are working away from home. Who cares, as long as they use protection? Right? Therein lays the problem. Upon further questioning you will find that on more than one occasion the man decided to forego the use of a condom, used it improperly, it broke, he didn’t have one, or he was drunk and didn’t use one. It isn’t the exception to the rule; it always happens that way with every single man I talk with. He will say, “Well, there was one time, when I was drinking and I didn’t have one. But I use them most of the time.” Unfortunately, using a condom most of the time doesn’t protect you from HIV. In fact, according to recent statistics released by the World Health Organization (WHO), using a condom all of the time doesn’t protect you either. The recent data has stated that 1.5 out of 10 times the condom will fail for numerous reasons including human and mechanical failure. This is why my organization LCBC along with MOVE and CRS do not talk about condoms as a viable option here in remote Lesotho where condoms aren’t readily available anyway (the exception is with discordant couples where one or both parties are already infected with HIV).

I digress. Anyway, the construction workers were telling me about their girlfriends at Ketane that they had to take because they were so far from Maseru. They told me that “at least they used condoms” to which I asked if they used them each and every time. They didn’t.

So I talked about faithfulness, the joy of having a wife, the hurt that their wives would feel if they knew about their girlfriends, and the general harm they could bring to themselves and their families. Here I was taken aback a bit when one said, “Well we have seen them all doing things in the United States just the way we do it in Lesotho. We watch the films. We have seen the TV shows.”

I replied that what they were watching was a sampling of fantasy. I said that the vast majority of Americans do not live in that way, most Americans live quiet lives and settle down once they are married. To which they said, “Ok, but what about Judge Hatchet? We watched Judge Hatchet. There was a woman there who was trying to find out who the father of her baby was. They tested more than five men and still didn’t find the baby’s father.”

I replied that not all people behaved in such a way, and that they showed that person as entertainment because her situation was so ridiculous and laughable that it made for good TV. They then told me, “Wait just a minute…” They brought to me their final argument, and the one that dropped my jaw and my head momentarily in shame. They came back with a western porn magazine. They showed me how western women were, and by that logic it shouldn’t matter how they behaved. They said at least they kept things in the privacy of a home, and didn’t publicize it for all of the world to see.

I held my composure, although I was a bit shaken, and had so many things racing through my mind the most prominent of which was, well maybe they’re right? Who am I to lecture them? I went to college. I went to high school. At best we have a culture of serial monogamy. Maybe it is just too unrealistic for a person to control their animal instincts. Maybe if they want to cheat on their wives and have 6 girlfriends on the side it’s their choice. Maybe if they want to get HIV it’s their choice. Then the final argument came to me.

America has 300 million people. If even 1 million people lived their lives like they did in the movies or in the porn magazines it was still only 3.3% of our population. Lesotho has a declining population currently estimated at 1.8 million down from 2 million in 2005. They have a 31% HIV rate (give or take a few %’s depending on which resource you use). It isn’t a small portion of their population that has a problem; the problem is imbedded in their culture.

I shared these statistics and began a Platonic dialogue:

Thabo: I can tell you that there are bad people everywhere. You will find people just as bad or worse than anyone you know here at every corner of the earth. We can only think about ourselves. We each know what is good or bad. Now tell me how many lovers do you have?
Construction Worker: I have a wife at home in Maseru. I have one lover there, and there are two women I am involved with here at Ketane.
Thabo: Where do those women at Ketane live?
Construction Worker: One is staying at Ha Maponyana that other at Lebengkeleng.
Thabo: When do you go to visit them?
Construction Worker: I go at night.
Thabo: Why do you go at night?
Construction Worker: I don’t want other people to see me.
Thabo: But, why don’t you want other people to see you?
Construction Worker: Because I know I’m doing a bad thing.
Thabo: You told me that it didn’t matter that you had lovers, but now you say it’s a bad thing. Which one is it?
Construction Worker: (laughs) Yes Ntate, you are right. I see your point. I will have to think about what I am doing.
Thabo: You see, inside, each one of us knows the difference between right and wrong, between good and bad. You don’t need me to talk to you about HIV and staying faithful to your wife. You know the answer: just follow the good part of your heart.

The small conversation was one of my most challenging and greatest successes here in Lesotho. It irritated me beyond belief and made me question if I what we were doing was really correct. The interaction was wonderful, and in the end I felt that what I do here in teaching abstinence and faithfulness HIV/AIDS prevention was fully reaffirmed.

I hope I did not present the conversation pretentiously because I certainly didn't mean to. I don’t always know better, and when someone gives me a solid reason to change my opinion that trumps my own I will change my opinion. I simply tried to write the events in my online journal the way they happened.

That is the news from Lesotho.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
15 May 2009

The Diamonds of Ketane...Ka nete, ba titaemane tsa Ketane

Last time my widows made popcorn they asked me if I could give their group a name. Up to this point we have had a loose organization, and it made me happy that they wanted to take the first step into forming a solidly cohesive group. So I thought about it and thought about it. They said they didn’t just want to be called the Ketane Widows Association, but they wanted a more meaningful name.

The Ketane Widows Association will still be their official name, but after much thought I gave them another. I gave them the name Litaemane tsa Ketane, the Diamonds of Ketane. They loved the name.

They are the most valuable resource in a community, are tough beyond measure, and shine with an uncanny brilliance.

Ka nete, ba titaemane tsa Ketane. It’s true, they are the diamonds of Ketane.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
12 May 2009

A Message of Hope

Whenever we have a meeting or ceremony of some sort it seems that, no matter what, one thing never fails: I am always asked to speak, and they always ask me to speak somewhere between 1 hour and 5 minutes before I am actually supposed to speak. Also, I have to speak in Sesotho. I don’t usually mind as I can just say a few words about whatever is going on and throw in a prevention message and be satisfied.

A few days ago a Basotho organization helped us with our garden project by giving us 5 digging forks, 5 spades, 5 watering cans, and 3 rakes. We had a ceremony to commemorate the event. Everything was planned days in advance, but the organizer came to me only an hour before the event and asked me to speak. He asked me to give a message of hope. It was a bit irritating because I knew I would have to use words that I don’t normally, and that I wouldn’t have time to practice and make sure they were accented properly etc. I was still writing my message right up to the point of my speech, but I think it came out alright.

I realize that a decent number of Basotho are reading my online journal because of its recent publication in the Public Eye. So with that in mind, grammatically incorrect as it may be, I will begin with the way I spoke:

Kea leboha Ntate Michael,

Lumelang Metichere, batsoali, le bathuti ba Sekonlong. Le phela joang? Kajeno Ntate Matlabe o nkopile ho bua ka ts’epo. Ha ke bile nako e ngata ho prepara joale mochlomong ke tla bua Sesotho se thata. Empa kea bua ka tsepo le ke kopa le tla mamela hantle le njuesta haeba ha le utloisisa. Na ke hantle? Hantle.

Joale kajeno re mona’ moho ho tla ithuta ka bohlokoa ba jarete le ho e haha. Ke ntho e bohlokoa haholo eo re e qalileng kajeno. Kea tseba hore re tla kotula litlamorao tse monate lilemo tse ngata. Kajeno re thusitse ke batho ba Serumula kahona re leboha haholo.

Empa thuso eo ba re fileng eona ke hore bonts’a tsela e nepahetseng. Bat la re bonts’a mokhoa oa ho etsa chelete le ho lema empa ke rona bat la tlamelha ho phethahatsa taba tsena. “Re tseba hore or ka isa pere metsing empa o keke oa e etsa hore enoe ha e sa battle.” Joale, ke re ho lona le tlameha ho noa metse ana. Re fuoe monyetla o babatsehang haholo, kahona ha re o amoheleng. Ka matsoha a mabeli.

Batho ba ka tloha libakeng tse ling ho tla re thusa empa re ka fumana kapa bona litlamorao tse manate ha feela re ka itjoetsa ka borona. Letsatsi le leng le le leng ha ke tsoha, ha ke ipotse hore na ke hloka ho etsa eng ho iphilisa. Empa ke ipotsa hore na ke tla esa eng ho ithusa hammoho le bahaisane ba ka. Ho na le seo o ka se etsang letsatsi le letsatsi. Ho na le seo o ka se etsang ho intlafatsa, bophelo ba hao le sechaba sa heno.

Bointlafatso ba ‘nete bo tlatla ha feela re sebetsa re le ‘moho re le bahaisane. Ha o thusa ngoaneno ho lema jarete ea hae, o tla bona litlamorao tse ntle jareteng ea hau.

Ka taba ena ke le fa qholotso batho ba Nohana, ke kopa hore le se ke la botsa hore na batho ba bang ba tla le etsetsa eng kapa hore na bahaisane sekolo se tla le etsetsa eng. Empa ipotseng hore na le tla etsa eng ho thusa bahaisane le sekolo sa lona. Haeba le ka etsa sena le tla bona liphetoho tse ntle.

Ho lona baithuti, ke re ke nako ea ho ithuthale ho sebetsa. Re a bona hore na HIV e entseng Naheng ena ea rona. Ruri e se e re qetile. Lona le ts’epo ea rona, le karabo tabeng ena. Ke lona ba lokelang ho ema ka matla bothateng. Ahang bokamoso ban aha ena. Le tseba ho itsereletsa khahlanong le HIV. Se ke la etsang thobalono ho fihlela lenyalo.

Ts’epahallang lenyalo. Empa na le tseba ho itsereletsa khahlanong le botsoa? Le tlameha ho sebetsa, le ithute, nglagatsang likelello tsa lona le ‘mele ea lona. Le tlameha ho ba ts’epo ea rona ho haheng naha ena ea Lesotho. Ke kopa hore le se ke la botsa hore na sekolo se tla le etsetsa eng kapa hore na batsoali batsoali bat la le etsa eng. Ipotseng hore na le tla etsetsa baithuti ‘moho eng. Tsatsing lena re lemme lipeo tse nyane empa re tlameha ho lintlafatsa. Batsoali le matichere, ke kopa hore le ts’elle le ts’otelle lijalo tsena. Lona bana le lijalo holing hantle, sebetsang le be le ntlafalle.
Khotso! Pula! Nala!

I have done my best to translate it to English, but of course some of the words don’t quite translate to English, or I’m not sure of the exact English meaning. This is the general idea, if not word for word:


Thank you Father Michael,
Hello teachers, parents, and school students. How are you? Today father Matlabe asked me to speak about hope. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare so maybe I will speak difficult Sesotho. But, I am speaking about hope and I ask that you listen well and tell me when you don’t understand. Is it good? Good.

Today we are all gathered for the good cause of learning about gardens and building them. It is a wonderful thing that has begun today. I know we will harvest the result for many years to come. Today we have been helped by the people of Serumula. We are very grateful and thank them for it.

But, the help they have given is only to show us the right path. They can show us how to make money and plant, but it is we who must fulfill it. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” I am saying to you, you must drink. We have been given a wonderful opportunity let us grasp it with both hands.

People can come from outside to help us, but you will only see real results when you develop yourselves from within. Each morning when I wake up I don’t ask myself, “What do I need to do to only survive today.” But, I ask myself, “What will I do today to help myself and my community.” There is always something to do. There is always some way to improve yourself, your life, and your community.

Real development will happen when we come together as a community and work together. When you have helped your brother plant his garden you will see better results from your own garden.

With that in mind I give you a challenge. People of Nohana, don’t ask what others can do to help you, or what the community or school can do to help you. Instead ask what you can do to help your community or school. If you do this we will see great improvements for everyone.

To the students, I say that now is the time for work and for study. We can all see what HIV has done to our country. It has almost destroyed us. You are the hope. You are the answer. You are the ones who must stay strong in the difficult times and build a better future for Lesotho. You know how to protect yourselves from HIV, abstain until marriage and be faithful in marriage. But do you know how to protect yourselves from laziness and indifference? You must work, study, improve your mind, improve your body. You must be our hope and build a better future for Lesotho. Don’t ask what your school or parents can do for you. Ask what you can do for them. Ask what you can do for your classmates.

Today we will plant small seeds. We must grow the seeds into strong productive plants. Parents and teachers water the seeds and care for them. You the students, the seeds, grow well, work, and prosper.
Peace! Rain! Prosperity!

Of course, I stole a few pages out of JFK’s playbook, but I don’t think that JFK, the Peace Corps founder, would mind. I did get a very good response, but it is hard to tell if the message sunk in. Most people and students said they understood my ‘difficult Sesotho,’ but only time will tell if the message can take root. Our only hope is that it can.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
11 May 2009

"Faithfulness Couples" Begins in Ketane

I am very proud to report that my host organization Lesotho Catholic Bishops’ Conference (LCBC) has fully picked up my couples program as a result of the workshops we held. They liked the idea of training couples so much that they are now rolling out a whole new training group called ‘Faithfulness Couples.’ It is one of the best results I could have hoped for, and I’m so glad that the message of fidelity will continue to be spread.

We selected some of the couples that attended my PEPFAR training workshops and combined them with couples who are well known and respected in their villages. The program will be a training of trainers, as our other programs. We will train the couples at workshops, and they will go out to their respective villages and areas to spread the message. My counterparts and I will also regularly visit the couples while they are training others to make sure they are giving the message properly. We usually answer difficult questions as they come up, and help the people with their presentations until we see that they can do it alone.

It is an exciting time for me, and I hope for Ketane. I am optimistic that the message will take hold, and we can really do some good here. So far the couples are very excited about the prospect of being trainers, and explaining their desire for faithfulness to others in the community.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
27 April 2009

Scary Snakes in Lesotho

A few months ago, I asked my students to write about a scary experience they had. To my surprise, three of the stories were about being bitten by snakes. One story was as follows:

A Scary Experience
I was going to the fields one day with my friend. We walked through the field until suddenly I felt a sharp pain at my foot. I looked down and saw a snake. They called it the cobra. It was very painful. My friend carried me to the clinic. At the clinic they gave me medicines. I felt better and went home.

Ntate Mokete stumbled upon a snake in his field today. Although it isn’t the first snake we’ve found it is the most dangerous (I think). I have tried my best to identify it with the limited resources I have, and I believe it is a Puff Adder.

Are there any snake experts who can tell me for certain what type of snake this is (was)?

It was actually a scary experience, and a reminder of some of the everyday dangers the people face here. They might be able to get anti-venom at the clinic, but then again they may not be able to. I have only seen three snakes since I’ve been here, and all of them met with a grisly end.

Honestly, the snake we let go could be the one that waits in the corn field for one of my students, and that IS scary.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
29 April 2009

Changing of the Garden Guard

I started working in the garden with the primary school students last week. It was fun teaching them, but it has been difficult to slowly say goodbye to my garden.

I kept a small little area for myself where, as we head into winter, I’m growing spinach, Japanese greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. It is just a little portion of my whole garden though. It will be much easier to manage.

We divided the rest of the garden up among the three oldest classes of students, each being responsible for a portion. I made seeds out of onions and Swiss chard last year, and saved them. They planted those, along with a few packets of fresh onion seed I bought with garden profit money. The idea is not to try to plant nutrition for the whole school; rather the idea is to plant very easy, hardy cash crops.

Onions will be their winter cash crop, and butternut squash their summer cash crop. Both are highly resistant to pests, grow with little care, are easy to manage, easy to sell, and have very long shelf lives. I am still selling the butternut squash I harvested in January, and it is still just as good as the day I first harvested it.

I’m hoping that by the time I leave Lesotho the school will have this garden project in place so they can make a little money for themselves each year.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
April 17 2009

The Spice of Life

April 14 2009

I have moved my agricultural learning onto herbs. It isn’t that herbs are necessarily hard to come by, I just thought it might be fun to try planting some, and teach about different spices. I planted basil, parsley, cayenne pepper, and mint.

I found that parsley is basically just as useless here as it is in the states. The only thing it really accomplished was adding some color to my plate of rice and beans. The cayenne pepper also wasn’t very successful. Using a packet of seeds that cost M10, I grew one cayenne pepper. I have, however, decided that this must mean that the pepper has special powers so I hung it outside of my door. It was just the one pepper, so I couldn’t really let the Basotho try it. Although I did tell them about the world famous chili drop in Pueblo, Colorado on New Year’s Eve (it’s our version of the New York City ball drop).

The basil and the mint have been the most successful, and have had the best culinary properties. The basil goes well with almost everything. The plants just finished flowering, so I picked the leaves and am drying them for use this winter. The seeds become coriander, and I am also drying them for use this winter. The basil was very easy to grow, now, if I can only convince the Basotho to use some spices.

The mint was the most fun of the herbs. I think it could be easily classified as a weed as it spreads like one. Another volunteer actually gave me the mint by cutting the stems off some of hers. I let the stems soak in water for 4 or 5 days, and they actually sprout roots. Then they can be planted just like seedlings. I don’t water it at all, but it has still thrived and multiplied quite rapidly outside of my house. The only thing I’ve used it for is making mint green tea, which is a nice treat in the evening. It has a wonderful smell and adds to the quality of the exterior of my little hut.



When things are avoid of spice, there’s nothing to do but make your own!

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

Cash Crops

April 17 2009

I started working in the garden with the primary school students last week. It was fun teaching them, but it has been difficult to slowly say goodbye to my garden. I kept a small little area for myself where, as we head into winter, I’m growing spinach, Japanese greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. It is just a little portion of my whole garden though. It will be much easier to manage.




We divided the rest of the garden up among the three oldest classes of students, each being responsible for a portion. I made seeds out of onions and Swiss chard last year, and saved them. They planted those, along with a few packets of fresh onion seed I bought with garden profit money. The idea is not to try to plant nutrition for the whole school; rather the idea is to plant very easy, hardy cash crops.



Onions will be their winter cash crop, and butternut squash their summer cash crop. Both are highly resistant to pests, grow with little care, are easy to manage, easy to sell, and have very long shelf lives. I am still selling the butternut squash I harvested in January, and it is still just as good as the day I first harvested it. I’m hoping that by the time I leave the school will have this little project in place so they can make a little money for themselves each year.

Easter

April 12 2009

Easter here is a very interesting affair. Parts of the tradition are very similar to what we do in America, and others are completely new. Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, we had a procession just like in the United States. Many people came, but as palms are not available we used branches from the popular (poplar) trees. Outside the church the priest blessed all of the branches, and then the people processed into the church waving their branches. It is a holy day of obligation, and so many people attended the service.



Easter is something that is altogether unique and fascinating. It doesn’t compare to anything I have seen in the United States or other countries that I’ve been to. The real service is not on Easter Sunday; it is on the night before Easter. People come at around 1900 on Saturday, and the services last well into the night concluding at dawn.

The night was long but had an awesome quality about it. The highlight of the service is at midnight. At midnight a massive bonfire is lit outside of the church. The people all gather round while singing and listening to scripture. As the fire burns ash reigns down and in the firelight it almost looks like flakes of snow. The Pascal candle is lit from this massive bonfire as it begins to die down. After the candle is lit, the people process back into the church.



The church was filled to the brim with people. However, around 0200 I started to look around and realized I was the only one still awake. The people don’t have that oh so important skill of sleeping while looking like you’re active that we gained at VMI. To this day I can still sleep standing up or sitting straight up in my chair. The Basotho, however, were passed out and sprawled out in every imaginable fashion. It made me laugh and I wondered if they were just attending the service for the sake of attending or if they really understood what was going on.



At around 0300 the priest switched to English because I was the only one in the whole church obviously awake and paying attention. The vigil was a good idea, but it needed to be explained to the people in more detail. I left at around 0330 allowing the sleeping Basotho to wait for the sunrise. I think the service should have been cut after the lighting of the candle. All in all though, it was a wonderful experience, and a magnificent way to celebrate Easter. Now maybe I’ll have to introduce them to a real Easter with colored eggs and the bunny…just kidding.

Ha Tlhabeli

April 5 2009

Yesterday Ntate Mokete and I faced a very difficult task. The village we visited is the furthest one of our villages to the southwest. It took close to 5 hours at a gallop/trot pace to reach the village. Unfortunately, that is not what made this visit particularly difficult.

We were called to make an emergency visit to this remote village. It isn’t easy for me to explain the things that happen here, nor is it easy to explain my life here. Yesterday I was warped back in time a few centuries. I was taken to a time of fear of the unknown, a time of misplaced anger, and a time where the only true feelings are those of helplessness, hopelessness, and loss. A few days ago, at Ha Tlhabeli, the village burned 3 ‘witches’ alive.

There are only three police officers for our entire area. Ketane has dozens of villages and an estimated population of between ten and fifteen thousand people. Being as remote as we are sometimes mob justice is the justice. In Uganda they called it jungle justice, and it is usually something that happens in a specific situation such as a thief being caught in the act. However, here the lack of education and a general misunderstanding of things, especially HIV, led to 3 innocent women being killed.

I will forgo the gory details of exactly what happened, except to say that the signs of what had transpired were still very evident when we arrived. The women had been burned in a rondoval. The air still smelled of burnt grass and ash, the scorched earth and mud around the rondoval was still evident. The village had a felling of uneasiness about it, the uneasiness that comes after something dreadful has happened.

A man at the village had died about a week ago. The man was openly HIV positive, and had been getting treatment from the clinic. The people of this village had still apparently failed to grasp the concept, and were convinced that the three women had bewitched the man and killed him. Thus the village became judge, jury, and executioner. The mob reared its ugly head, and three women were burned alive.
The people did not understand. After a mystery illness took their father they must have felt completely helpless, not comprehending why he was taken. In misplaced anger, and in an effort to strike back they tried to find an answer. The uneducated guess being that witchcraft was responsible.

And so began the difficult task of not only speaking to people who may have killed only a few days earlier, but also getting them to understand the whys and the hows of HIV and life. It isn’t all that easy. I can give the answers to the whys and hows of HIV, but no one can fully answer those difficult life questions. My personal answer, which as a Peace Corps Volunteer I cannot share, is that it all comes down to free will, God’s greatest gift to us. It’s not that bad things happen to good people. It’s that everyone has free will, the thief, the murderer, the drunk driver, and the Christian. To take away the free will of one would mean that the gift is effectively negated. Of course, we won’t ever fully understand why things happen the way they do, but I think it is important to be at peace with the fact that things happen, and often we will have no control over the way events transpire.

We did our very best to talk to the people. Both Ntate Mokete and I felt powerfully that we needed to impress our message with sincerity and caring. Amazingly, I think it worked. Many of the people wanted to be tested for HIV, and it opened a general forum for discussion on the illness. We did not directly address what had happened in the village. After a few hours of talking though it became apparent that the people understood the travesty of what had happened.



The police are investigating the matter to find specific culprits, and Ntate Mokete and I are trying to get to more remote villages so that we can hopefully prevent something like this from happening again. As we had galloped almost the whole way to the village we walked and trotted the horses back because they were exhausted. We arrived back home after dark. Ketane is no playground, and Ha Tlhabeli has given me a lot to think about over the next few days.

Andrew Dernovsek(Thabo Nohana)

The Mighty Huntress

March 14 2008

Although I actually really like the name Katse, I am thinking about renaming her. Over the past few weeks she has proven herself to be invaluable by wiping out all the nearby mice, and has become quite a nice pet.



She is actually such an efficient killing machine that teachers and other people from the village come to borrow her for a few nights to get rid of their mice. She is still very small, but quick as… well… a cat.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

The Fam

10 March 2008

I thought that I would introduce you to my whole family. This is the Fam.



I know I’ve talked about Ares. Also, after I got Ares I got a cat for the mice, appropriately named Katse. Finally, someone from Ha Nohana gave me another puppy. I think they saw how depressed I got after Rocky died, and figured I needed a backup. So I have a second puppy named Aegis. So Ares, Aegis, Katse, and Thabo; Team Nohana.

We make quite the pack. It’s really funny to roam around the village with my boys in tow. Katse, the gentler female influence of our group, seems to suffer from a bit of identity confusion. Amazing as it is, she runs around the village with us. I think she might believe she’s a dog. She darts back and forth between the trees under the dogs and up fence posts the whole way, but she still follows along. The Basotho get quite a kick out of it. They say they’ve never seen a cat follow anyone anywhere ever before. Even funnier is the fact that she still tries to ‘milk’ Ares, a male dog.

The youngest member, Aegis, also seems to be a bit confused. He is house trained, but once I brought the cat inside Aegis deemed it appropriate that he also use the litter box. He doesn’t miss, but he most definitely uses the cat’s litter box at night.



Ares is very rambunctious and bites almost everything in site. I never bite trained him so he bites pretty hard.

I’m thinking about sending the whole group to counseling for some deep psychotherapy, although they all are a lot of fun and seem to be happy in their quirks. I probably won’t after all they are my Fam.

Andrew Dernosvek (Thabo Nohana)

Hike To Semongkong

2 March 2009
As part of my personal reward for all the hard work on the workshops, I decided to take to the mountains and go see Lesotho’s most famous waterfall at Semongkong. I left early in the morning at around 0 dark 30, and headed off. I had to ford and cross the river at Riverside because the bridge was washed out, and then went up to one of our distant villages at Ha Thabo Matete. I arrived at around 11:00 after an arduous climb up a mountain to get out of the Ketane valley, but I was greeted by a medley of late summer flowers. I stopped for lunch on top (goat jerky) and continued on my way.



My knowledge of the area ends at Ha Thabo Matete, and from here I had to ask directions. Now, I was really in the mountains. On top of the mountains. It might be completely possible that some of the people in the villages I passed through had never seen a white person before. I think most of them were a bit bewildered to see a white guy come tromping through their little mountain villages. I think they were even more amazed when the white guy started speaking Sesotho. Some of the looks I got were priceless.

At Ha Thabo Matete, after finding the chief’s residence and drawing a rather large crowd, the people decided I needed an escort to the next village. They sent me with two shepherds to show me the way to the next village of Ha Laene. They were equally surprised to see me at Ha Laene. I left my escort there and continued on my way alone. I ran out of water somewhere after Ha Laene, but before I reached the next village of Ha Salang. I thought I would take the opportunity to taste the forbidden cool mountain waters of Lesotho. Honestly, I was really thirsty, and figured I would probably get sick, and I did. Oh did I ever. Fortunately though I did not get sick for a few days, and not until I had reached the capital of Maseru.



I passed through many mountain villages on the way to Semongkong. The people were wonderfully nice and happy to see me. While I was walking I could not help but think that this is where all Peace Corps Volunteers should be. They should be in the mountain schools and the mountain villages. They shouldn’t be in camp towns (capital cities) where people already have access to so many services and information. They should be here, where the people have access to nothing, literally nothing.

I like the mountains, and yes it is hard living, but Peace Corps is hard living. In the remote areas children need education the most, people need to hear the HIV message, and they simply haven’t. Hard living is a small sacrifice to bring so much good to people who otherwise might live and die without even hearing the most basic information on HIV or even learning to read and write. I’m not saying that all Peace Corps Volunteers should be as remote as I, but I think attention should be paid to rural placement sites, away from services and information.



I knew I was beginning to get closer to Semongkong when the people started asking me for candy and food. I wish people wouldn’t give things away for free because it was such a distasteful and unwelcome change from the gentle hospitality of the mountain villages to the abrasive demands for candy from the people closer to Semongkong.
I arrived close to my endpoint at the village of Tsenekeng at around 1900. As it was dark people began offering me a place to stay. It was nice, and I almost took a family up on it thinking that I would not reach Semongkong that day. However, I found one last car going to Semongkong. After a 30 minute drive I arrived at the lodge and had a steak and a hot shower. The best I can tell from the map it was close to 50km in one day, which bests my personal record. My dogs were barking so instead of walking back the next day I decided to head into Maseru for some R&R.

The next day I went to the falls. It is a beautiful waterfall. The whole hike was a nice way to relax and still enjoy Lesotho. I hope you enjoy the pictures from my newly purchased camera. As I make a whopping $150/month buying it meant no nice food for awhile, but I think the pictures are worth it. That’s all from the mountains of Lesotho.



Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

The Last Day

27 February 2009
We had our last day of PEPFAR workshops today. It was a grueling run, but thank goodness we’re finally finished. This workshop again targeted shepherds and chiefs. We moved the venue to Qobong, one of our remote village areas which normally takes all day to reach on horseback. MOVE/CRS had vehicles though and that made things a bit nicer. It still took about 2 hours, and rained the entire day making it a pretty sloppy affair.
To gather the shepherds we used two new tactics. We called together the rural crime prevention units which are made up of men from the rural villages, and we called all the village chiefs. We made it a requirement that each chief come with 2 shepherds from his village. This gave us a very nice turnout. Honestly, I was pretty exhausted, and Ntate Mokete wasn’t there so I don’t feel like my presentation had its usual zip. The shepherds seemed to like it though. These ones were a bit younger, mostly in their teens and had lots of crazy questions about sex, their bodies, etc.



These shepherds gave me a bit of a different perspective on the struggles they face as teen boys. They told me that they liked the idea of abstaining and waiting to find ‘the best wife’, but they would never be able to find a wife if they abstained. They said that the girls and women only want the ‘playboys’ and if they don’t have many girlfriends than they won’t be able to get even one. I of course, said that I didn’t think this was truly the case, however, the other men in attendance including my educated Basotho colleagues said that this was the case for them as well when they were growing up. It was pretty shocking to hear. I tried to explain to them that if a woman was like that she wasn’t worth wasting time on, and gave my speech on what it means to be a man.



They were all very enthusiastic, and again almost all of them signed cards. One young man gave us all a good laugh. He said, “Well Ntate Thabo, I am going to put this card above my door. When my girlfriend comes in I will tell her to look at it. She will look at it, and walk right out the door. I know she will. That is OK though because this is my choice, not hers.”



We had a flat tire on the way back because well, it’s Ketane. I always carry my Leatherman and Maglite now, and they really came in handy. I arrived home around 10. The trainings are over though and I’m going to take a nice long well-deserved break.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

PEPFAR Workshops

February 25 2009
The PEPFAR workshops have been proceeding smoothly. We had a brief break this weekend, but we’re back at it. The past two days we hosted MOVE committees and ‘Matsema’ committees. The move committees are village committees who disperse information, project ideas, health care, and other important resources to their respective villages. They have been previously trained by MOV/CRS, but this additional training was very useful. They staff was able to give them more in depth information on some topics because they had prior knowledge.


The matsema committees are also village committees put together by MOVE/CRS. They are made of people who use ‘working together’ in their respective villages. I actually used a similar tactic while we were teaching keyhole gardens. I encouraged the villages to work on one garden at a time until they were all finished. The same principle applies to these committees, but they work on various other community projects. Most of the participants signed commitment cards; some that didn’t had attended one of my previous workshops in November.

Training Couples

February 21 2009
For the past two days we have been training couples. If you read my last entry you will know we previously focused on shepherds, but now have shifted course to training couples. This is another part of the strategy we designed in targeting high risk groups. The fact of the matter is that 88% of people who are infected with HIV in Lesotho are or were married (widowed, divorced). With close to 76% of infections occurring through sexual intercourse, (the majority of the others are among children who contract HIV during childbirth) it tells us the major problem. Of course, this is infidelity in marriage. The past two days have targeted couples specifically.

All of our sessions were the same as I outlined in the previous entry, the only session that changed was Ntate Mokete and my prevention session. We always use a basic outline talking about HIV/AIDS, modes of transmission, how you don’t get it, PMTCT, etc. What we always have to change is our strategies. Our strategies have to reflect what our audience needs, and I couldn’t give our shepherds prevention strategies to couples. Let me just say couples in Lesotho have a lot of problems. Some of the things the women said in particular, just made my jaw drop.



We began by giving our basic presentation. Then, instead of talking about prevention strategies, we split them into groups of women only and men only. We asked them to answer questions like: what are the biggest challenges you face in your marriage, what are some reasons for tension between you and your spouse, what would you like your spouse to do differently in your marriage, and how would you solve the challenges in your marriage. It was supposed to be a forum for open discussion, but it also brought many issues to light including the inequality of women in Lesotho.
I don’t really want to comment on each individual item, but I think the list speaks for itself. Some are interesting, some are funny, but most are downright appalling.

Men’s Challenges in their Families:
 Women don’t take care of men while they are working
 Women are at all times angry in the family; especially when a man has made a mistake
 Women care more about their original families (their own parents etc.) then their spouse’s families
 Women seduce men by wearing fancy clothes
 Women refuse to cook or give them food if they can’t find work

Women’s Challenges in their Families:
 Men sleep around
 Men don’t care about children and wife
 Men don’t want to be questioned when they make a mistake (sleep with someone else)
 Men humiliate their wives in front of their children with insults
 Men don’t sleep with their wives after drinking
 Men make deals with the wives parents and leave the wives out
 Men beat them too often and sometimes too hard
 Men refuse to support their wives parents, but care more about their own parents
 Men become jealous when they (men) aren’t working, and every mistake that a women makes (i.e. sleeping with another man) is because of that according to men
We usually don’t have time in our presentations to have a group discussion like the one we had here. At the end I had one thing to say…woops. It opened up a whole can of worms. In a way though, it was wonderful as the people legitimately did talk about the issues and find good solutions to every problem on that list. Each and every one of them probably needs at least a week of workshops and couples counseling. Plus there are the underlying gender inequality issues etc. I know I said I wasn’t going to comment on the list, but well, I will.



Let me begin with the interesting parts. I thought one of the interesting dynamics was the close knit family structure that came up. Each partner basically complained that not enough attention was being paid to their parents. Can you imagine that in America? I actually thought it was very nice and really spoke to how well they take care of family here. The funny. Well I thought it was pretty funny when the men were complaining about their wives being perpetually angry and not giving them food when they don’t work. Although rest assured I do see these are legitimate issues and could be part of the reason for them wanting to spend time with other women.

The appalling. I think Ntate Mokete may have had to push my bottom jaw closed a few minutes after the women didn’t complain about being beaten, but complained about ‘being beaten too much and too hard.’

As for the infidelity, although the men didn’t comment on it, (my guess is they were afraid to speak up in their groups) the women told us everything we needed to know. Let me just say that men get blamed for everything in Lesotho and in other African countries I’ve been to. They are supposedly single handedly responsible for all the problems and the spreading of the virus. I always thought this was downright laughable. True they may take a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to spreading the virus particularly because of women’s inequality, but…every time someone tells me that men are spreading the virus I tell them exactly what my father always told me about fighting. “Andrew, it takes two to tango.” I simple yet very telling statement meaning well it wasn’t just the other guy fighting now was it?

Standing right next to every unfaithful man there is somewhere an unfaithful women. He doesn’t do it by himself does he? Although the women said they are upset that their men are always sleeping around, they went on to complain that the men are too judgmental about their own lapses of sleeping with other men.

Men can be unfaithful. Women can be unfaithful. For the marriage to work both need to be faithful. We went on and discussed our strategies for couples such as: keeping open communication, the importance of one partner, the health of the person, their spouse, and their children, keeping your cow well fed at home, mutual respect, a typical American couple and American responses to unfaithfulness, revealing the ‘secret’ of adultery, biblical reasons (not done by me but by my Catholic counterparts), and finally I use a few very leading questions and analogies. The first thing I do is ask all the men to raise their hand if they would be upset by their wife cheating. I then ask the women the same question. I show them that their partner is not happy with that behavior, even if they never say anything.

I take on typical cultural response and say, “Oh, but Ntate Thabo, my lovers buy me nice things, and I really like nice things.” To which I say, which do you care about more, some extra meat, a nice dress, or your life, your health, your spouse, and your family. What will happen to your children if their parents die of HIV?” At the secondary school where I teach 21 of my 24 students are orphans. A very telling statistic.

There is a big problem with alcohol here. One of the strategies we always discuss is that it’s never too late to change your behavior and begin again. To do so, it can be important to avoid high risk places. Places such as the bar. I always playfully ask them a series of questions, asking them to raise their hands if they agree: who has enough money to buy all the food they need, who has enough money to clothe themselves and their family, who has enough money to buy shoes, who has enough to buy seeds for planting next year, and…who has enough money to buy alcohol? At this they all laugh because they do all spend lots of money on alcohol. Women and men. I could write a whole entry on the effects that alcohol has here, but I’ll leave it for another day and just say that alcohol consumption is a big problem.

I talk about my garden. I talk about how more than 40 animals from the village have come down and eaten from my garden at various times. I then explain that I do not just get irate with whoever owns the animals, but I get angry with the entire village, and yell at each and every one of them from the teachers on down. This is because I know that the animal passed 8 rondovals and countless people before it arrived at my garden. Everyone saw it without a shepherd or a rope. Some probably even saw it eating in my garden and just never told me anything.

Finally, our newest statistic released in Lesotho is that by 2040 Basotho will cease to exist. I do not think people in other countries fully understand what is going on here. I think they understand we have a high HIV rate yes, and oh, 31% is awful. I don’t talk about it a lot because most of the time I just don’t know what to say. More people have died in my own village since I’ve been here than I can count. In the whole area the death toll is in the hundreds or more. In only 18 months. I can look back through my pictures and see the faces of people who are no longer here. I can remember students, teachers, chiefs, health workers, and friends who have succumbed to the virus. I can see empty houses and filled graves, yet there is no end in sight. I will never be able to fully explain what life is like here in the mountains of Africa watching a race being wiped out while trying to show people a better way of living. All I can do is hope and pray that my efforts have been enough to save some lives and change others.

Ninety-eight people signed fidelity cards with their partners, forty-four couples in two days. A raindrop in the ocean, but it’s a start.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

To Be a Man

After close to a year of writing, planning, organizing, and arranging, I am pleased to say that my Lesotho PEPFAR funded workshops finally truly began. To boot they began with a bang. In planning these workshops I think I have encountered virtually every problem possible in the developing and the industrialized worlds. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say I’ve had to deal with everything from the money arriving 6 months late to the very difficult task of getting shepherds to attend the workshops.

The workshops are HIV/AIDS prevention workshops. Specifically they address the topics of abstinence until marriage and faithfulness in marriage, two key PEPFAR HIV/AIDS prevention tenets, and the only two for which money is available for through the grant that I applied for. My target groups were shepherds and couples.

I was able to make one workshop with my host organization LCBC. I’m not sure if I wrote about it, but we trained 22 couples (44 people) all of who signed fidelity cards with their partner re-committing themselves to a faithful marriage. For various reasons, I couldn’t continue to make the workshops in conjunction with my host organization LCBC, so I looked for other partners in Ketane. I found a wonderful organization in CRS (Catholic Relief Services) MOVE.

As I said we started our first day, of 6 days of continuous workshops, with a bang. We had the difficult task of not only teaching, but gathering the shepherds from various villages in Ketane. When I first applied for the grant, people thought this could not be done. They said to assemble them would be impossible. It was very difficult, but they are a group that has been in my mind for more than a year.

Simply put, they do not receive the training, education, and other opportunities that most other people in Lesotho do. When we talk at schools, they aren’t there. They are out watching the animals. When we talk at the villages, they aren’t there. They are out watching the animals. When we hold workshops, they aren’t there. They are out watching the animals. To me, they seem to be almost a forgotten class of people. They have their own life, and their own Lesotho that can be so much different from what the rest of Basotho experience.

A shepherd can range in age from 8 years old to 50. However, most of them are in their teens or close to my age. Typically a shepherd wakes up around 4 or 5, if he is lucky gets some soft porridge for breakfast, and then heads out with his animals to pasture. He will stay at pasture the whole day, with his animals. If he is lucky, and few are, he will be able to come in or someone will bring him some papa (cornmeal) for lunch around 1400. He comes in when the sun sets, now around 1900, gets a big meal, and goes to sleep. He does not get a day off, takes no holidays, no breaks, and gets no education. I believe they are one of the highest risk groups for contracting HIV in Lesotho, and the group that never hears any part of the message.

They can be crude, crass, and dangerous. They can also be helpful, polite, and extremely pleasant. Their pastimes include stick fighting (as I explained in the Initiation School entry), and training their dogs. Both are very potent weapons. The shepherds are off on their own sometimes high in the mountains. Stock theft is still a problem in Lesotho, and as a result the shepherds have to be ready to defend themselves. If you remember back to one of my entries about the mountain villages, the dogs wanted to maul Rocky, they were trained that way to defend the livestock. Needless to say, the shepherds are a difficult group to train and to gather.

So our first day was one of two days that specifically targeted the shepherds. We achieved what was said to be impossible and gathered 44 shepherds from 19 different villages (our target was 50 people/day). All credit here goes to my partners in MOVE/CRS who employed the first part of our collection strategy and went out to each individual village spoke with chiefs, households, and shepherds to make sure they would come. They arranged for others in the village to watch the animals, and checked multiple times to make sure the shepherds would attend. Some came from villages up to 5 hours away.

The result was amazing. The shepherds were literally thrilled to be there. Most of them seemed to be floating on cloud 9 the whole day. There was never a break in their attentive listening, and they participated very actively. For all of them it was their first ever workshop. During breaks in the sessions they sang traditional shepherd songs and danced, I wish I had my camera.

We trained them in a myriad of areas. We of course focused on HIV/AIDS Prevention (AB) done by myself and Ntate Mokete. We also had sessions in HIV/AIDS Basics done by CRS-MOVE, Behavior Change Communication done myself and Ntate Mokete, Stigma and Discrimination done by PIH (Partners In Health), Nutrition and Food Preservation MoA (Ministry of Agriculture), Home Gardening & Hygiene CRS-MOVE, Human Rights, Child Rights, and Child Abuse CRS-MOVE, Sexual Offense done by the Ketane Police and the CGPU (Child and Gender Protection Unit), and finally Conflict Resolution by CRS-MOVE.

As you can see from the schedule, each day was long and a bit tiring for me, but the shepherds didn’t tire. In fact, at the end of the workshop they did not want to leave. They asked if they could stay for another day, and learn more about important things. Specifically, they wanted to hear more from Ntate Mokete and I. It made my heart melt. This is the kind of work I came to Lesotho to do.

Speaking to the shepherds posed a challenge in itself. I had to change many of my strategies in talking to them (like the importance of staying in school). Ntate Mokete and I began as we always do with introductions, statistics, and HIV/AIDS basics, although the basics were covered by CRS-MOVE in a preceding session. One of these days I’ll write out my whole spiel, but not today. I will say that in talking with the shepherds I had to draw on my own experience and talk to them as a man talking to men. There was simply no other way to do it. I had to relay stories from my past and my own experiences and struggles as a man. It was difficult but powerful. In the end, I saw understanding in so many watchful eyes.

I saw understanding, regret, pride, and hope when I explained to them what it means to me to be a man. As I talked about my own journey into manhood complete with struggles and triumphs, I saw pride in their eyes as they probably remembered theirs. As I transitioned into what it means to me to be a man I saw eyes become downcast in regret and shame. I talked about how a true man doesn’t think about himself he thinks of others. A real man takes care of his family first and then himself. A real man can drink, but only occasionally and in moderation. A real man puts his wife on a pedestal and would never hit or harass a woman. A real man builds his future, suffers when necessary, so that others can benefit from his labor. A real man takes care of his business, follows an honest moral code, and is a man of integrity. I saw regret turn to hope as their eyes turned up and again began to make contact when I finished by telling them that it is never too late to turn over a new leaf. It is never too late to correct the mistakes of the past. Finally, that Lesotho needs strong men, and that is we called each and every one of them specifically from their villages today; because we knew that they were the movers and the shakers of Lesotho.

It was one of the most challenging presentations I’ve had to give. I knew that one slip up, misplaced word, or something strongly un-agreeable and I would lose my audience. All credit goes to my dedicated ally Ntate Mokete, without whom the speech would not have been possible. I use as much Sesotho as I can, but some parts are just tough. Although I could explain something in Sesotho, I can’t say it with the same impact that I could if I used English. Ntate Mokete can add the impact and give it an extra punch in Sesotho.

The response was remarkable. After asking if they could attend another day of workshops and hear from Ntate Mokete and me again, they said that they were going to talk to the other shepherds about what they learned because as important community members it should be part of their job to pass on the message. 42 signed commitment cards for either fidelity in marriage or abstinence until marriage and many also asked for boxes of gloves for their respective initiation schools (there are a good amount of bloody injuries that come from stick fighting). I received all kinds of questions after the workshop. It added to the legitimacy of my presentation as I like them saddled up my horse, and together we galloped off still chatting. Some of them even want me to go to the initiation school and talk to others.

Tomorrow will be completely different as we are going to be speaking to couples. As I am not married, it will be a different kind of challenge.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
February 19 2009

Christmas Video Final Part- Slideshow

Sorry to all I just saw that all the last videos were rejected for being too long. I'll try to get something shorter (or in pieces) up next time I'm in Maseru.

Andrew

Xmas Video Part 3 Nohana Primary/Secondary

The Link

Andrew

Xmas Video Part 2 Storeroom/Bathroom

A Request for Computers

Firstly, thank you so much to all of you who have helped make the computer project a reality. My particular thanks go out to FIPE, and the board of FIPE who generously donated $1,000 to the computer school. This has made the project a success. The school construction is underway and the foundation is being laid now. The actual school has an 80w solar panel, 2 deep-cycle solar batteries, a power inverter, power regulator, and one brand new desktop computer. In short, we have all the electricity we could need here at Ketane. In fact, I had the school start a side project to charge cell phones and other electronics for a price.

However, we have only 1 computer. I have completely tapped the school resources through fund raising etc. We used money from the garden, concerts, selling oil, and other activities to help us raise the money for building the school. The project would be a total success if we could have between 2 and 5 more computers giving us a total of between 3 and 6. It is important that multiple people be able to sit near each other and learn at the same time so they can learn from each other in a computer lab type setting.

We will take any computer. My preference would be to have a computer that can at least run Microsoft Windows XP, but we will take anything and everything. As my students are so fond of telling me, “Ntate Thabo, half a loaf is better than no bread.”

I can purchase a desktop computer here for between $350 and $400. This then requires no extra shipping etc. However, we will take any computers from the US or anywhere else. I don’t know exactly how much shipping would be, but I believe it is expensive. I can and have received packages at my P.O. Box, but please let me know if something is coming so I can look for it.

Also, I will be having visitors from the US at the end of March (Mathabo and Rathabo (my parents)). Although I haven’t spoken with them, I’m sure they would be able to bring something small like an old laptop if one was donated.
If you have an extra computer lying around or know a company or business that does please think of me and the Nohana Computer School. Although the project is now a successful one, we would love to get just a couple more computers!

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

2 February 2009

Xmas Video Home Part 1 House/Library

This is part of the video I mailed home for Christmas this year. This part is a tour of my house and our library. I can't post the whole video, but I will try to post parts when I have time in Maseru. Enjoy.

Andrew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TPQZZGDdaA

Ketane Widows Association

A few months back I had the idea to start a widows association. I never had the chance to write about it, but it has actually become a very successful project. I made announcements around Ketane, and invited widows who were interested in starting small income generating projects to come to my meeting. I tried to stress the point that they would not be getting free handouts, but instead I would help them to develop small projects whereby they could help themselves.

The first meeting was very successful. We had 44 participants and officially formed the Ketane Widows Association. I targeted widows specifically because it can be very difficult for them to find work or means of living. Lesotho is still a strongly patriarchal society, and women still have problems with things such as land rights. This can be a huge problem if a husband dies, in most cases his land will go back to his family.

So, the widows, Ntate Mokete, and I set plans for several projects. Different groups were to work on sewing/dressmaking, popcorn, clay pot making, farming, and broom making. I took charge of the popcorn group, and it has been very successful. Unfortunately, some of the other projects have lost steam. It is very discouraging as sometimes it seems like the only projects that will work are the ones that I’m directly running; if I try to manage from a distance the people just don’t have the effort.

The widows are hard workers though, and for any of you who have heard me refer to ‘my widows’ this is the group I’m talking about. Most of them are hard workers. The ones that aren’t quietly dropped out of the group others realizing there were no free handouts also dropped out of the group. However, those that are left are really interested in working to make just a little bit of money for themselves. They sell the popcorn around the village and at schools, and they turn a nice little profit.
I have some other projects in mind for them down the road, but I will have to see how things go. There is a solar bread cooker that is made by the Canadian man who runs the college at Bethel. I can get it for around R5,000. If things go well I might like to try this with them as I really think they could make a lot of money.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

1 July 2008

The Passing of the Slop Bucket

The long awaited completion of one of my projects, one of the projects that you helped to support, has finally come to fruition. The pigs are being passed on to caretakers in Nohana Primary School. The children will help to care for the pigs and learn about various aspects of piggery. Some of the resulting piglets will be passed on to needy people in the village while others will be raised for meat or to continue the project.

It has been a lot of hard work, sweat, reading, and running after the pigs, but it was worth it. I would like to pass on my personal thanks and the heartfelt thanks of the village and the primary school to all of you who supported this simple yet meaningful project and helped to make it a reality. The pupils of Nohana Primary School and the people of Mafikeng should have meat for years to come, and an added source of income.

As for me, I will continue to work loosely with the project slowly withdrawing my support where I am able. I will keep up general supervision until it is no longer needed (which shouldn’t be long). I do feel that if I were to leave tomorrow the project would be a success and would continue on in my absence. It is a good feeling, and exactly the kind of small grassroots development that a Peace Corps Volunteer is meant to do.

For the love of bacon, pork chops, and ham thank you from all of us at Ketane!

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

29 January 2009

PS Sorry there are no more pictures. My camera is kaput so I won't have them unless it's an old post. I hope you still enjoy the entries.

Bringing Color to Mafikeng

I have never really viewed myself as either a farmer or a gardener. Living here at Ketane, I more fell into an agrarian lifestyle than anything else. It is true, I was always interested in farming, and it is in my blood as my forefathers first made their life in America by farming and other family members carry on this tradition even today.

Did I ever think I would be farming when I came to the tiny mountain Kingdom of Lesotho? No, not really. However, I have successfully turned a hand at it and even taught it around Ketane. It has become a sort of relaxing hobby. I have found it soothing to work in the fields or in my garden. Mostly it helps me to focus my mind.
When you are alone out in the middle of the mountains for 2 years your thoughts have a tendency to build up. You develop a very close relationship with yourself and with that voice in your head. Although I suppose if you develop a relationship with more than one voice it might be time to go home.

Working in the field, gardening, or hard manual work in general helps me to clear the thoughts that are usually passing through my mind at about a mile a minute, and simply enjoy the place that I’m in. As a result, I have developed a healthy interest in all things related to an agrarian lifestyle. Whether it be riding a horse, raising pigs, gardening, or making my own meat I have come to enjoy this style of living and most of what it entails.

I think it was the lack of color in this place that made me begin, or maybe I was just bored one day, or maybe both. For the past few months I have been working very diligently on growing flowers outside of my house, on brining color to a place that previously has only known various shades of green and brown.

I started several months back when I was bored one day, and thought to myself, “Well I’ve never really learned how to mix and pour cement maybe I can do that.”
I did, and although there was no wood for the frames I did my best with cardboard and rock supports. I made garden boxes around the front of my horse and storeroom. It wasn’t the prettiest cement in the world, but for being my first attempt and only having cardboard to work with I was pleased.

Next, I meticulously filled the boxes with a dirt, manure, and compost mix and planted my seeds. It took weeks of twice a day watering, careful transplanting, shading, etc., but in the end it was worth it. The flowers came out nicer than I could have ever imagined and are the envy of each and every person that walks by my rondoval. They are a mix of dahlia, snapdragons, and a few others.

The colors are magnificent and wonderful to look at. Countless people have asked for seeds or asked me to help them plant flowers like mine. I am so proud of them, and I am now making seeds for people around the village. Maybe color will be brought to this normally monochrome and dull place.
Would I have ever imagined myself as a farmer, gardener, or horticulturist before I came here? Not in a million years. Yet here I am planting away, clearing my mind, and focusing on the task at hand.


Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

26 January 2009

Initiation School

March 2008 (Old Post)
Each culture has a unique rite of passage that takes a young person into adult hood. In some cultures such as our own it may be something subtle like graduating High School, getting married, or holding down that first job. Here in Lesotho, the rite of passage for a young man is very well defined. The rite of passage is a 6 month initiation school, also called a circumcision school.
The school is meant to be a complete secret, and is not talked about openly. My apologies in advance to any of my Basotho readers, but I will not reveal anything of the school that is not common knowledge here in Lesotho. The school term ranges anywhere from 6 months downward to just a few months. At the school Basotho learn traditional ways of their culture, ways of the Mosotho man, how to be a Mosotho man, how to complete various tasks of the Mosotho man, molamu (stick) fighting, and they are circumcised.

Parts of the school can probably be compared to a form of boot camp. The young men spend the whole time without shoes and are forced to shave their heads every day. In fact, it is thought that in the early years of HIV the schools contributed greatly to the spread of HIV/AIDS. One razor was used for head shaving and circumcising among all the pupils. I cannot speak for each school, but I believe that awareness on this particular issue is now very high, and students are all given separate razors. However, it is one of the things we still always mention when talking at the villages.
I won’t go into more specifics about the school besides to say the actual school is at a remote hidden location up in the mountains. Only those who have attended can go near the school and can be involved in the rite of passage ceremony.

After 6 months of hard work, suffering, and learning the ways of their culture the young Mosotho man is circumcised and goes back down to the villages with the rest of his class. The graduating ceremony was quite the site, and my only regret was that I could not be more involved or closer because I have never attended the school. It is unfortunate I would have liked to talk about HIV/AIDS and what it means to be a man in a western country, but for the time being I was sidelined.
Upon graduation the students are painted in red and adorn various gifts from their families. They march in through the valley and observe the Molamu (stick) fighting of the already initiated men. The molamu fights in themselves are probably a whole journal entry. Each man has two pretty heavy sticks, one for defense and one for offense. The men make a large square and challenge each other to fights. The winner is decided when one of the two participants concedes. Injury is not uncommon especially broken arms, concussions, and the like.
After the fighting the graduating members go to a predetermined village where everyone is invited to attend a feast in their honor, but not to see their faces. The men keep their backs to the crowd, but in turn they receive gifts from their family and well wishers as congratulations for their passage into man hood. Each new man stands up and shouts his family history of his fathers before him. He tells about himself, what he has learned, and what has made him a man. The speeches are quite wonderful to hear and you can truly feel the emotion in each man as he shouts his family history.

So as I said, the audience and other village members watch from the background as the members of the initiation school commence with their ceremony. We are not allowed to see their faces, but not to worry Thabo is not without his tricks. I gave my camera to a man who was allowed to see their faces, and as a result I give you these beautiful pictures of the final initiation school feast.
It was a powerful ceremony. One father and son in particular stood out to me. The father was standing in the foreground head held high and listening as his son shouted their family history in the same fashion that he himself once did. Intermittently, the father would jump, nod his head, or bury his hands in his face. By the end the father had tears streaming down his face yet was holding his head with his chin pointed so high that pride beamed down from his whole visage. He cheered, jumped, and radiated a jubilant glow as his son became a man.


The whole experience brought back countless memories of VMI, life in the ratline, and my rite of passage. It was a magnificent event to see here in Lesotho.
Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)

Livingstone Island and Home Again

I’ll try to give you some of the highlights of my vacation which I took over Christmas and New Year's. A few of us Peace Corps Volunteers took a flight directly to Livingstone, Zambia (Victoria Falls). We stayed at a backpackers there and used it as a base of operations and branching out. We did everything and anything there is to do in the area.

My favorite (and scariest) day was visiting Livingstone Island. The island is apparently the place where Livingstone first viewed the falls from, and the view is stunning. It is an island in the middle of the falls, and you can look down and to either side and see the massive falls crashing down around you. However, that was not the closest I got to the falls.

Above the falls there is a pool called The Devil’s Pool. You can swim to this pool and sit, swim, and stand directly on top of Victoria Falls. Normally, it is not an incredibly difficult task to go out to the pool and swim. However, at this time of year there is a lot of rain making the water very powerful and the level high. In retrospect it was certainly not the brightest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m very glad that I didn’t become a permanent resident of Victoria Falls.

You go out with three very strong local guides (quite a job). You hold hands and walk through the current where you can. Where you cannot you take turns swimming. The guides then position themselves in echelon downstream in case you get caught in the current. There are no ropes, harnesses, or nets just a man telling you, “Ok swim fast.”
“Yeah, Ok. You bet I’ll swim fast!”

We made it to The Devil’s Pool, which was actually no longer really a pool as water was being swept over the back. A guide stood in the back and basically held me for a few seconds. The current was still much stronger than I expected, and still trying to push me over the falls. A few seconds was enough, and I quickly clambered out onto the safe rocks next to the pool. The swim back was even more treacherous as we were starting very close to the falls. Somehow I made it, and we all sat down for a gourmet lunch on Livingstone Island.

I was a bit jittery for the rest the day, probably from excess adrenaline coursing through my veins. Maybe after the Peace Corps, Africa will have fulfilled my desire for adventure, but somehow I doubt it.

Unfortunately for all of my readers the blog will be simply a written blog from now on. My poor camera took in too much water while I was trying to take pictures of The Devil’s Pool from below the falls. Pepi! (Sorry!) I still have old ones stored on my computer, so I might use some of those, but no new pictures from Ketane =(. As they say, “You can’t stand under Victoria Falls with your non-waterproof camera and expect it to work the next day.” Well it might just be what I say now.Anyway, the whole vacation was marvelous, and in truth I could write a whole chapter just about stories from vacation. I will save them for later though. For now, I’m just happy to be back home, and back to work. After 22 days away from my site I have finally returned. It was a wonderful holiday, but I am really ready to get back home. I hadn’t seen my new dog(Ares), my cat(Katse), flowers, garden, projects, or friends in such a long time that I was really missing Ketane. Much to my surprise everything was not only completely intact, but also doing very well. The garden is looking great and the dog and the cat still remember me. It was really great to finally be home again.

Andrew Dernovsek aka Thabo Nohana
12 January 2009

5 Days 15 Villages 30 Caregivers

We tackled the villages with intrepidity this past week. We were given the difficult task of checking on almost our entire complement of home based caregivers before the Christmas break. They are as far reaching as 6 hours on a horse, and as close as the neighbor next door. In 5 days we called on 15 villages and about 30 caregivers. During the visits we checked on home-based caregivers, patients, reporting, and the general village situation. The main goal was to confirm accurate reporting or improve current reporting for purposes of monitoring and evaluation. It was an arduous task, but as always we had the well deserved reward of a job properly done upon completion. This allowed me to go into my long Christmas holiday guilt free.

Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Victoria Falls here I come!

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
19 December 2008

Recipe for Goat to Odka

Remember my post of a few days back, about slaughtering the goat for meat? The meat preservation seems to have worked quite well. I used a recipe for Odka. Odka is a sun-dried meat made by the nomads of Somalia. It was very easy to make.Recipe: Slaughter a goat, clean it and cut up the meat. Dip the pieces in a brine solution, spice them with other spices, and let them dry for a day. After that cook them quickly in oil. Spice them again and let them dry for 3 more days in the sun. And presto, goat jerky.

It was so easy, and now I have fresh jerky whenever I want. It is really tasty to boot.I have been letting people try it, telling them the recipe and trying to encourage meat preservation. Who knows, maybe it will catch on. This particular recipe creates jerky, if kept in a sealed container, with a shelf life of more than 1 year.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
20 November 2008

A Cat in the House

In other news Katse moved in to the house. She has actually grown on me quite a bit. However, there now seems to be a competition for my affection in which Ares most definitely holds the upper hand.

Katse hisses at him a lot, and I don’t think he appreciates this. We’re working on it though and maybe after some time they will get along. I can’t complain, I’ve got a kitten, a puppy, and work is going well.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
11 December 2008

Ketane Sanitation Project

I haven’t talked much about the Ketane Sanitation Project. I was briefly looking for donations, but I later decided that building toilets is something the people could do themselves. It is very slow going because of the amount of rock we have to dig through, but we are now beginning to see some progress. The secondary school has 2 toilets and a water tap. The primary school is currently working on 4 toilets. We have built 1 in the village. After seeing some of our progress, I applied for the US Ambassador’s Self Help Grant, which we received.



We received $7,000 to build 2 more toilets for the secondary school and build 3 toilets at 2 other schools in Ketane. I’m very pleased with the project so far, and I haven’t had to do a lot of work beyond encouragement and of course writing the self help grant. The thing I am most proud of though is that the people are building them on their own, just the way I wanted. We don’t need fancy latrines made of cinder block and cement. Instead we used rock, cement, and matsema (working together as a community). Who knows, this may really help keep the area clean and reduce some of water borne illnesses.

Andrew Dernovsek aka Thabo Nohana
10 December 2008

Katse

While I was waiting around Ketane for the walk to begin, I decided to add yet another family member to my clan. Katse (cat) is going to live in my storeroom and eat my not so welcome guests. In case you’re wondering, the answer is no, I’m not going to give the cat a proper name because well, it’s a cat. She wasn’t thrilled about being carried in a box for an hour in 90+ degree weather, and has spent most of her time hiding, which is fine with me. As long as she eats the mice.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
8 December 2008

"To be free and we are all related"

We had a ‘fun walk’ organized by Catholic Relief Services (CRS/MOVE) here at Ketane. It was supposed to start at 0700 but didn’t get going until around 1030. It is summer now, and the heat is oppressive by 0900. The sun rises around 0445 and so do I. If you want to get any significant work done outside you almost have to do it early. I do still occasionally work all throughout the day, but I have to lather up in plenty of sunscreen and drink lots of water.

The walk got started pretty late, and the heat took some of the fun out of it, but most of the NGO workers in the area still turned up. It was a decent turnout. The theme of the walk doesn’t translate well, but roughly it is something like ‘to be free and we are all related.’ I think it was good for the people to see all of us from different organizations coming together.

Andrew Dernovsek aka Thabo Nohana
7 December 2008

Ares

Today I added to my family of one. There has been a void since Rocky headed off to the great hunting grounds in the sky. I have been casually looking for another dog, and I found one today. Ares, named after the Greek god of war and battle will help me to begin a new chapter of my life here at Ketane. He looks like he’ll be a killer, but only time will tell.

In other news, we are getting some new faces at LCBC Ketane. We were approved for another year, and also for a bigger program. This means I am getting more counterparts, more people like Ntate Mokete, to visit villages with. One has arrived so far, but we are budgeted to get more. It means that hopefully I will be spending more time doing what I enjoy the most, which is visiting the villages and helping them with their various problems.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
5 December 2008

Meat Preservation

If you want to eat meat, you should be ready to slaughter an animal. We don’t have meat at Ketane. Sheep and goats are used for the wool and mohair, and any animal that is slaughtered, most often a pig, is eaten immediately. The meat is cut up, a red flag is lifted, and people come and buy meat. It lasts one day, and we get meat maybe once every few months. Today that all changed, and we had a true cultural exchange. The men from the village taught me how to properly slaughter and skin an animal, and I taught about a new form of meat preservation.

The whole process was actually pretty easy. Once you know what you’re doing it goes quickly. I won’t go into details because I know that most of you probably don’t want to read about the whole process.


After the slaughter we started the meat preservation process by using salt water and spices, then putting the meat out to dry in the sun. Actually, I hope it works because once again I’m only following the instructions I read from a book.



Anyway, the animal gets split up according to custom. The meat is mine to do with as I please. The intestines go to the shepherd, and much to my disgust I continue to hear how nice they are. I think they might be the Basotho’s favorite part. The lungs and most other organs are cooked immediately and given to all those who helped in the slaughtering. The skin, head, and liver are all mine. I gave them all away to the people who helped me slaughter the goat.



After we were finishing up, and they were all enjoying their meal of goat insides, a funny thing happened. People just started to come out of the woodwork. People that I’ve never seen before or just random people who are never near my house. They all wanted a piece of the action, and I did my best to gracefully refuse. Of course, my Basotho friends weren’t so graceful to refuse and just shooed them away. I did get the chance to explain the whole meat preservation technique to many people though. I will write about it later, assuming it works. So that’s the news from Lesotho. I have fresh meat and it seems once again the sun is shining.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
16 November 2008

Paid with a Goat

We just finished a workshop here for our program participants as part of our extension project. I believe I told you, but in case I didn’t, LCBC Ketane has been extended for another year. This is good news for me because it means I will still have work whenever I want it for the next year. The workshop wasn’t anything exciting, or anything I haven’t told you about before.

However, I did do something interesting today. Before I tell you what I did, let me explain that I am fully integrated into my village, and considered to be a regular member of the community. Also, I make as much money as the average teacher. I follow all Basotho customs to the best of my ability, and teach American ones where I’m able. In Lesotho, it is not acceptable for animals to enter fields, let alone to destroy the crops. Rocky and I have taken around 30 animals from my garden. After tiptoeing around the issue for some months, I tried several things. I held a village meeting and asked the people to keep the animals out of my field explaining that it was really their field as all the profits go back to the community in ways such as bookshelves for the library. I chased the animals from my garden. I put up signs around the garden. Still, I kept finding animals in the garden.

I asked the Basotho what to do, and they said I have to capture the animals and take them to the chief. At the chief’s, the person will be required to pay for the damage they caused if they want their animal back. So essentially I take them to animal prison. I tried everything I could think of, both the priest and I even talked about it at church, but to no avail. So Rocky and I used to take the animals to animal prison. I started off charging a small token amount, but this had little effect. I felt very bad each time I had to charge someone to pay because I am here to help not hurt the people of the village.

However, in my culture, and in their culture it is not appropriate to just let their animals run wild and destroy the crops. I have lived here for almost a year and a half. I don’t have a lot of money, and my food source and income project should not be subject to constant destruction by animals. So Rocky and I took the animals to prison. The people paid, and paid. It still hasn’t stopped, and I am currently talking with the chief to try to figure out what to do. If you want me to explain in more depth, I can and will, but I am simply trying to tell you that the following was done completely in accordance with Basotho culture, rules, and the way any Mosotho would have handled the situation.

Well gosh Andrew, now I want to know what the heck you did. Well I told you my corn was all destroyed. Not only was I irate, but so was the priest and the rest of the community after they saw the depression it shot me into. So the guy had to pay. He had to pay only the market price for my destroyed corn, which was M300 (about $30). He didn’t have this so he paid me with a goat. He did not complain, as completely understanding, and apologized again for the damage he caused. He did not complain because this is how we handle things in Lesotho, and I am now a member of this community.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
15 November 2008

A Journey that I Do Love

I just got back from Bethel where Ntate Mokete and I were invited to speak to the High School and College. Bethel, if you remember, is the location of the next closest volunteers. I still have to wake up at 0200 and take a 0300 taxi ride. It poured all of Saturday and Sunday making the roads very muddy. We had to get out and walk next to the taxi several times in the early morning light. Of course, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. After the taxi dropped us off, we walked for another hour to reach the actual town of Bethel. I think we arrived around 0700 or 0730.

The two volunteers didn’t get my ‘taxi note’ that said we were coming. A taxi note is one of the ways I communicate with the outside world. I write someone’s village, name and maybe directions on a note and send it on the 0300 taxi. It takes anywhere from a day to a week depending on how fast people relay the note. This one arrived that Monday morning as I was standing in the house talking to the volunteer. It was actually pretty funny.

The two volunteers scrambled and organized their respective schools. I spoke to Bethel High School that afternoon. Most of the 260 students were in attendance, and I think it went very well. Interestingly enough they complained profusely when I switched to English for some of the more technical parts, and Ntate Mokete began translating. They didn’t complain about my English, rather they complained that it was being translated, so I gave the whole speech in English.

They were normal teenagers, but I was able to control them well enough. All of them stayed well past 1700 to listen. I think this was mainly to do the fact that we handed out pieces of paper for them to anonymously ask a question, a technique I learned from the Ugandans while working with Universal Chastity Education. We had hundreds of questions, and although the teachers were antsy to leave, the students wanted their questions answered. So we stayed in the hot summer sun answering all of their different questions.

We had a barbeque that night, which was amazing. We had grilled chicken, potato salad, baked beans, a garden salad, and a cake in celebration of my belated birthday. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a proper meal with more than 1 or 2 things to eat, so it was wonderful.

The next morning we spoke at Bethel College. Although it was a smaller crowd, it was a bit tougher. Firstly, they understood mostly Sesotho. Secondly, they were my age. As I’ve said before, people my age are the missing demographic at Ketane. There are the young up, up to high school age, and the middle age and older, but very few people my age. Some of them didn’t seem quite as keen to listen, but I pulled out all of my audience control techniques, and we had them fairly engaged by the end.

After you’ve been teaching a while, you can tell when you’ve reached someone almost immediately. Sometimes you may not know for many years, but other times you can really see that your message hit home. I saw this in many faces at Bethel, and it was a good feeling. After a rough couple of weeks, it was great to be back in the saddle, and feel like I’m making a difference.

We left for home that afternoon, and God smiled on us. Ntate Mokete and I were both exhausted and still not recovered from our early morning taxi ride and lectures. As a thank you the volunteer from Bethel Agricultural College gave us loaves of bread and tomato seedlings. All of my tomatoes had been wiped out by the hail, so this was a wonderful gift. We got a ride from the Bethel to the road where we needed to wait for the taxi that was coming from Mohale’s Hoek. We waited for about 30 minuntes, and then Ntate Mokete went up the hill to get some water. On the way back he was riding in our very own Ketane Partner’s in Health car. The driver, whose wife is one of my computer students, was just dropping something off near Bethel, and was going to take us all the way back to Ketane. It was a smooth trip in a four-wheel drive vehicle. From Ketane, we caught another ride all the way to Mafikeng. So I only had to walk for all of 15 minutes. This was perfect, and as soon as I got back to my hut, I collapsed on my bed and slept soundly for a few hours.

Lesotho, and the Peace Corps experience, holds a life of incredible ups and downs. Sometimes you will feel as if you are king of the mountain standing atop the world, yet at others it will all but crush your spirit. It is a journey, but regardless of whether I’m in a valley, plateau, or atop a mountain; I do love it. My life here is a unique experience that I will never fully be able to put into words. The adventure, the thrill, and the challenge are enough to keep me satisfied for the time being anyway.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
12 November 2008

Reflections and Replanting

Things are more or less getting back to normal. I spent the past week not talking to all but a few of my closest friends. I needed my time to mourn and to reflect on my way forward. After much thought, I have decided two things for certain. First, there are people in Lesotho who are ready to be helped, ready to work, and are worth my spending time and effort here to help them. Secondly, I have, without a doubt in my mind, greatly affected the lives of at least a few if not many people here at Ketane in a profound way. Sometimes it takes a great setback to let us see a great success.

During the past week, one thought kept entering my mind. It was an old memory of an even older writing. “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” That is, in fact, exactly what I have decided to do. I know what I’m doing in Lesotho. I will do my best teach what I am here to teach, and do what I am here to do. If my words fall on deaf ears, so be it, and on I go to the next village. You can’t force people to live a certain way, you can only show them another option and hope they make a good decision.

I am back teaching computers again. The students are excited as ever and making good progress. My favorite part of teaching is when one of my students does something so complicated that they impress themselves. It makes their whole face light up and glow, usually followed by a broad smile stretching from ear to ear. This makes me feel like it’s all worth it.

My final recovery step was to replant. I replanted mostly melons, and some other low care things. I did plant lettuce, tomatoes, and green beans also, but I’m not expecting to need to work too hard on them. It felt good to be turning the soil again. A good solid rain came as if to reward me for my efforts.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
6 November 2008

Life is a Storm

“Life is a storm, my friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you: as a man.”-The Count of Monte Cristo

Or as we say at VMI, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Andrew Dernovsek
3 November 2008

This is Africa

Things haven’t gotten a lot better here. Last night a cow came and finished off what was left of my garden. It was the same bull that ate my cabbage last week, and Rocky and I took to the ‘animal prison’ at the chief’s house. It walked right down my rows of sweet corn, and ate every last one. Between the hail, thieves, and animals, I have nothing left and no dog. All of the events of the past week from the people breaking the water pump for the third time and utterly destroying my entire garden in a matter of days have left me wondering what it actually is that I’m doing here.

The people have little or no regard for anything that’s not theirs. They could not care less about thieves in my garden or animals destroying what’s left of it. Things really do fall apart here. There is a reason why every time I come back I have to fix some major problem. Things fall apart because of the apathetic nature of the people. How can you teach someone to care? If they really don’t care, what on earth am I doing here wasting my time?

There is a movie, that when I first saw it two lines really made me laugh and I thought how silly they were. The movie is Blood Diamond, an excellent and heartbreaking movie. I of course wouldn’t even begin to compare my experiences to any part of the movie; however, there were two lines that spoke about all of Africa. The first was repeated throughout the movie, “This is Africa.” In the second, the main character is talking about different types of people in Africa. He comes to ‘your Peace Corps types,’ and says that they only stick around long enough to realize that they’re not really helping anybody.

The more I live here, the more I work here, the more I’m haunted by those two lines. This is Africa. It is not a nice place. It is dog eat dog with each person only out for him or herself. It has taken me an incredible amount of work to accomplish the simplest tasks i.e. building keyhole gardens. It has taken even more work to get the people to work together. At the end of the day though, I have realized they really don’t care. The only reason they do anything is the hope that they will get some great reward for their work. This is Africa. My crops are ruined. What wasn’t ruined was stolen. What wasn’t stolen was pilfered. The water pipes are broken…again, and people don’t really care. They just have this shrug it off attitude, as if to say, ‘That’s why we were taking our water from the river. That’s why we don’t try to plant.’
A culture, a society raised on handouts. People who only want something for nothing; they are willing to do nothing to help themselves. Don’t get me wrong, they really want to be helped, but far be it from me to ask them to pick up a rock to help build themselves a water tank.

What is the way forward? Won’t my library fall apart after I leave? Every project will just collapse. I see now how missionaries get sucked in for the long haul. They want to help the people, but they see that as soon as they leave everything will fall apart. So they don’t leave. As for me, I have other plans for my life. I don’t plan to spend a lifetime trying to teach people that bad things are going to happen if you have sex with everyone in your village.

Why is it that most other cultures and all the monotheistic religions have figured out that multiple partners is not a natural human state? Of course there are always exceptions, but in general when people in the US, Britain, Uganda, Europe, and Asia get married they have sex with one person. Here, it is an uphill battle. Imagine trying to convince everyone in your town that they all shouldn’t be sleeping with each other. Then imagine that they disagree with you. They tell me they understand, have been enlightened, and will change their ways, but I have my doubts. I have seen many go to Church. They go almost as a weekly ritual and social gathering. They don’t take anything out of it. They don’t go home, reflect, and try to be better people. They go home steal from their neighbor and then sleep with his wife. Such is Lesotho.

I eat gruel for breakfast. I eat rice and beans for lunch and dinner. Since I’ve been here my waist size has gone from a 32 to a 27. You can see my ribs, but I still work as hard as the first day I arrived. And for what? Yes, I know there are greater tragedies in the world. There are starving people, sick people, etc. The difference between my situation and theirs, is that I have voluntarily put myself here. I do not work for myself, to better my life, to make more money, but I work for others. I work to better their lives not my own. That is the difference. Shouldn’t I at least be suffering to help myself?

This brings me to my final reflective point. What am I doing here? Did I just sign up to waste two years of my life? It’s starting to seem like that. Yes, I’ve done some great things, but I’m beginning to realize that those things will probably just disappear after I leave. The crops are destroyed. The water is gone. There are no teachers at the secondary school. The villagers have spent over a month now trying to gather rocks and sand to build a water tank (with good reason, I’m sure someone will break it a month after completion). I’m discouraged and losing hope. Did I mention my dog is dead? As much as I’d like to end all of my journal entries on an upbeat note, I just can’t do it anymore. This is Africa. And that’s the news from Lesotho.

Andrew Dernovsek aka Thabo Nohana
2 November 2008

Snapped at the Joint

When the hits start coming, they don’t stop. I woke up this morning to find that the only thing that had survived the hail, my carrots, had all been stolen. Not one here and there, but someone came at night and took all of them. Every last one. I don’t know what is wrong with people here. I am starting to think that there is something wrong though. The apathy and disregard for everything is simply amazing.

And our water is gone. Yeah, some kids thought it would be fun to jump up and down on the pipes because…why not right? I mean what could possibly happen if you jumped up and down on the pipes giving water to the whole village. They were old enough to know better. It wasn’t a couple of two year olds; they were big enough to snap a lead pipe. It is incredible how stupid people can be. It snapped at the joint because that’s where pipes break. We can’t get the broken piece out of the joint.Of course we live 6 hours from the nearest town so there are no knew joints to be had. I guess I’ll start rationing my water. It’s a good thing I don’t have any crops left to water.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
30 October 2008

just me and my destroyed vegetables

I don’t know exactly what depression feels like, but I imagine it is something like the way I’m feeling now. I couldn’t even go outside today. I couldn’t look at the crops, and I was constantly reminded of my absent friend. I literally have no energy, and I don’t really care. I didn’t realize what a crutch Rocky was. The next closest American is a 3 hour taxi ride at 2:30AM. I didn’t mind it before, but now I feel isolated and alone. There is no one out here I can relate to, no one I can talk to. Maybe if you’re a dog person you can understand this: Rocky understood me, and related to me. Now there’s no one. Just me and my destroyed vegetables.

Andrew Dernovsek
29 October 2008

Hail Ravages Ketane Crops

Until today, we have been suffering through almost 5 months of drought here in Ketane Lesotho. It wasn’t so bad in the winter because when I did water the moisture stayed in the soil longer. All of October I have been struggling to keep my new little plants alive. I planted summer crops ranging from tomatoes to watermelon to everything in between just like last year. Well today our prayers were answered, kind of.

It started to rain in the morning. And it rained. And rained. And rained. Then it started to rain hard, in what can only be described as ‘raining buckets.’ I was actually inside of the office with Ntate Mokete, and from the outset of the rain we were both happy. I’m sure you could see our moods change as the rain continued, and then it came down really hard. Being a farmer is a difficult thing. Too much or too little of so many different things (sun, rain, soil nutrients) can cause everything to go poorly. Around 10 it switched to hail. It started out as little hail, and continued growing until marble sized hail was pounding the ground.We both looked at each other and knew that was it. It hailed for 45 minutes. In 45 minutes, our work over the past 2 months was completely, utterly, destroyed. The hail eventually stopped, and it rained for a while longer. When the storm had quieted down a bit, I went out to survey the damage. Everything was gone, wiped out. Our crops at Ketane are finished. The hail ripped the leaves and fruits off of the trees. My little plants didn’t stand a chance. What wasn’t cut down by the hail froze shortly afterwards. It certainly was not the boost I needed after Rocky’s death. I just stopped looking after a while and sat inside.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
28 October 2008

Rocky: A Good Friend

Rest in Peace, Rocky

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
Ketane, Lesotho, AFRICA
28 October 2008

Rocky’s Last Days

I was all smiles most of the day today. I had a great time in Maseru, and in Bloemfontein, South Africa. My batteries were recharged. I was able to send a truckload of food with my supervisors who will be arriving on Tuesday for a site visit. I got medicine for Rocky. To top it off, I got to fly the plane again. I know most of the MAF pilots now, so if it’s just me in the plane they let me fly. The pilot also gave me a log sheet so I can keep track and continue to log my hours. The day is always better when you’ve flown.

We landed and I walked back to site. On the way back, I thought of how well everything was going at site and how many blessings I had. I was confident that my buddy would be there to greet me.

He wasn’t. He had died in the morning. I knew he was sick, but I just wasn’t expecting that. Well, I was, but I was expecting them to tell me he died the day after I left. He held on for almost a week convulsing on my grass by himself, and died the morning I arrived. It ripped my heart out. It was really awful to think that while I was messing around in Maseru my companion was clinging to life, probably wondering when I was coming back.

The silver lining is that some of the people actually had a funeral procession for him. This made me feel a whole lot better. About 20 people attended Rocky’s funeral, which is I’m sure about 19 more than have ever buried a dog in Lesotho. It was nice that they cared that much, and it really made me feel like a part of the community. I also know they wouldn’t have done that for any other dog, so it made me feel special. It did not, however, help me shake off the loss of Rocky.Thinking back on my time in Lesotho, I can tell you of very few moments of my 15 months at Ketane where he was not by my side. I remember when he was little, and I thought he would pass out trying to keep up with me when going to the villages. I remember him fighting dogs of all sizes. He knew commands in Sesotho, was house trained, and the envy of everyone who owned a dog at Ketane. He guarded my house, and my garden. In his 1 year of life he captured 6 pigs, 8 sheep, 3 goats, 2 cows, and 1 bull in my garden. He followed me everywhere. People used to laugh and say that they could always tell exactly where I was. Whatever house I was in, or even the latrine, Rocky would sit straight up with his back against the door, and just guard. By the time he was big he ran to the furthest villages with the horse, the horse usually being the one to tire first. I miss him already. I miss all those things, catching animals, fighting dogs, running to the village. I opened a can of tuna and realized that I actually had to drain the oil outside because my buddy wasn’t around to eagerly eat it up. My dishes are all much dirtier than normal, all lacking the good once over he used to give them. Most of all I miss sitting next to him and looking at the mountains, and the way he used to nuzzle up next to my feet when I was working at night. If there is a dog heaven, I’m sure he’s there because he certainly was a good dog.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
27 October 2008

Rocky is Really Sick

He’s really sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but the convulsions have spread to the rest of his body. Rocky’s still a trooper, but he is in obvious pain now. He doesn’t hold his head up, and crashes to the ground when he lies down. I wish there was a way to get him medicine out here. There are so many things we take for granted back home, like being able to take your sick dog to a vet. I have been trying all the local remedies, but I have little hope that any of them will work.

We swirled some nasty disinfectant in his mouth, which he loved. We made him drink potash, which he loved. Finally, I went to the Sangoma (medicine man) and he gave me some traditional herbs. After we gave him those he bit Ntate Mokete. I’m almost positive Rocky doesn’t have rabies but Ntate Mokete had to go to the clinic and get shots just in case.

I think the worst part is that I can actually see him fighting. I can see him forcing himself to eat, and walking around. He isn’t going to just lie down and die. I wish I could get some medicine for him, but Maseru is 11 hours away.

I had to put him outside last night because I couldn’t sleep. He was crying and yelping so much that as bad as I felt doing it; I had to sleep. The poor guy, my only hope now is that he can tough it out. I’m going to Maseru for a week though, and I don’t expect him to make it. I gave burial instructions to some of the boys. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I feel like I’m abandoning him, but I have to go to Maseru. At least I will try to come back with some medicine.

Thobo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
17 October 2008

Computer Class Progress Report

The computer class is going well. I have been regularly teaching 11 students, quite a feat with one solar panel. One class will be in their fourth month and the other in their third. Most of them are coming along quite well. There are still those students though…that just make me want to slam my head into the wall repeatedly. I am teaching the teachers from the schools here. The best way I can explain it is to imagine what it was like for a person in the US to first learn a computer. Imagine how long it took and how many times you had to teach them. Now imagine someone who not only has never seen a computer, but also has poor English and a forgetful memory. It is simply incredible and a true test of my patience. There are two of these students, older female teachers, and they just don’t get it. No matter how many times I teach it.

Normally, I would just tell them this class isn’t for them, but I have to continue teaching them because of the internal politics. I can’t teach some teachers computers and leave other out. It is really a trying experience. I force them to sit and take notes, so the next lesson they just try to read through their notes to find the answer. To top it off they get upset if I get snippy with them. Although last time I told them that until they start remembering what I taught them in the last lesson, I’m going to be snippy.

On the other side of the spectrum, most of my other students are progressing extremely well. They get it, and probably study their notes at night. I only have to show them things once or twice, and then they are able to do it. We are most of the way through Microsoft Word, and I was thinking of beginning typing with them soon. The other two, well it will be awhile. Maybe after they master turning on the computer.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
16 October 2008

Rocky is Sick

Rocky is sick again. He has been seriously ill so many times now that I just imagine he’ll pull through. It does seem pretty bad this time though. His jaw and head muscles are twitching uncontrollably. Every few seconds he clenches his jaw, and his ears pull up. He is still eating, and is also moving around, which is a good sign. He is a tough guy, so hopefully whatever this is will just pass.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
15 October 2008

Perils of Pig-Saving

Well it’s not really the return of the crazy because he’s never actually left. Today, he made me especially angry though. This morning I heard a pig screaming bloody murder. If you’ve never heard a pig squealing, it is really something else. They can make an unbelievable amount of racket. When they are frightened, threatened, injured, or even sometimes excited, they squeal and carry on like you wouldn’t believe.

I figured the people were just slaughtering a pig in the village, which was good news because we would get to eat meat this week. They seem to prefer the very inhumane method of slitting its throat and letting it run around screaming until it dies; hence, my thoughts that they were just slaughtering a pig. The racket went on for longer than usual and was much closer than usual. Rocky and I went to investigate and saw that the crazy guy had his dogs tearing a pig from the village (not one of mine) to ribbons. I’m usually pretty tolerant of the Basotho’s extremely inhumane treatment of all the various animals, but this was a food source for the village, and a lot of money for someone.

Rocky and I went back to the house and armed up; I have collected quite an arsenal of various weaponry mostly from the crazy guy. At various times in the past month I have taken from him a hatchet, two knives, a lead pipe, a hollow metal pipe, matches, and a few big wooden sticks. I picked the hollow metal pipe, and Rocky and I went to work. I have Rocky very well trained. Instead of picking up on the pack hunt, there were three dogs on the pig, he went after the pack with me. We gave them quite the thrashing, a few classes from the Primary School even came to watch. Rocky, although very pleasant and basically an American dog, is vicious in a fight, and my hollow metal pipe couldn’t be trifled with either. The crazy guy, even as crazy as he is, knew went to stay out of it and showed us his heels. The dogs weren’t so lucky, and Rocky and I taught them a hard lesson.
The pig lived. It was pretty cut up, but it will survive to be eaten another day. It’s funny in the US I would never dream of hitting a dog, but after living here for over a year I didn’t think for even a second about it. The dogs here aren’t like our dogs. They’re nasty, mean, and will bite you just for looking at them the wrong way. Tonight I can go to sleep and add another item to the list of things I never thought I’d be doing in Lesotho.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
12 May 2008

Water Project Underway

Thanks to the support of various donors the Ketane Water Project is underway. We began our first step today by measuring at the village of Ha Sekhola, and Qotiane Primary School. There is a clean water source a ways away from the village and school. It is clean and constant but slow. The idea is that we will build a water collection tank so that the clean water is not wasted. From this tank the water will move down to Qotiane Primary School and the village of Ha Sekhola. There will be 4 different water taps at different places, each with their own small tank.

The people and the children of this school suffer a great deal. Oddly enough they suffer the most during heavy rains. They are downstream from many of the villages on the Ketane River. By the time the water reaches them it is very contaminated. Also, during heavy rains the water becomes completely unusable due to the high amount of silt and muck. The people have to walk for a few kilometers just to draw water from this contaminated source.

It is an excellent jumping off point for us, and hopefully we can make a big difference in the lives of the people here.

The chief, his son, Ntate Mokete, the Priest, and I all measured the entire length. We will be using over 2000 Meters of pipe and cement for 4 water collection/distribution tanks. We are pictured here at the source of the clean water.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
15 May 2008

Bareback Up to Sekhutlong

We returned to Sekhutlong today, this time to talk about HIV/AIDS. If you remember, this is the village that had requested Ntate Mokete and me to come teach keyhole gardens. They were very motivated, and remained motivated for this meeting. We gave our standard spiel, and had a good response.

They seemed to be particularly and attentive. I wonder if this is due to the fact that we came and taught keyhole gardens first. The gardens have already begun to benefit them, and I suspect this may have given us an increased credibility in the village.

The village meeting went as scheduled, and the chief was very welcoming. He worked as a security guard in Maseru, which makes him a very important and knowledgeable man here at Ketane. He had a solar panel, and talked about our respective set ups and I showed him how he could improve his. He wife also prepared meat for us, a true rarity at Ketane, especially at the villages. This was a great and tasty honor, and made Ntate Mokete and I very happy.

Ntate Mokete had some business at Ketane that morning so we took different paths to Sekhutlong.The village of Sekhutlong is directly below my ‘cell phone mountain,’ and across a river. I took Leluma, but with a twist. I have become quite comfortable riding him with a saddle, so I thought I would try to begin to learn to ride bareback. The reasoning being, you never know when you might be without a saddle, maybe it will break or who knows, so why not learn?

Tonight, one word: ouch. Well maybe two words: ouch ouch. Leluma, although full of spirit and pep, is a skinny beast. His backbone sticks up and his ribs stick out. We got up to a cantor, but bouncing on his backbone has really made my backside sore.

Bareback is very different because you have nothing to hold onto with your legs and nothing to support you while riding the horse. The only way to stay on and control the horse is with your thighs. You have to squeeze them constantly, and basically support your whole body in this way. Then if you get moving, you have the additional pressure of bouncing on the horse. The faster you go the tighter you have to hold on.

When going downhill, I didn’t have a big problem; the horse’s front legs and neck helped me to not slide too far forward. However, going uphill gave me quite a laugh. I think my leg muscles were spent by the time I got near Sekhutlong, and I just couldn’t hang on anymore. So with nothing to support me, when going uphill, I just slid straight back on the horse. We were only walking, but I just couldn’t hold on with my legs. I ended up holding onto Leluma’s mane, which he probably wasn’t super happy about. I imagine on the hill right before Sekutlong we were quite the site. I was almost laying flat on the horse trying not to slide off the back, while holding onto his mane, and Leluma was just plodding his way uphill. It was not pretty, graceful, or proper horsemanship in any way, but we made it.

On the way back my thighs and bum were already aching and I could barely stay on. I gave Ntate Mokete a lift across the river and we almost fell off the horse 2 or 3 times laughing. He got on behind me and I tried to take us across, but my legs were just so tired. Leluma stopped to drink about halfway through. We were already balancing to stay on, and we came to a standstill in the middle of the river. We were both laughing and about to get soaked and fall off. It was like someone tickling your fingers when you are trying to hold onto something or fall. You know it’s bad, you know you’re going to fall, and you know it’s going to hurt, but you can’t stop laughing. I couldn’t get Leluma to stop drinking, and every time I jerked the bridle we almost fell off. I eventually got him going and we made it across. I walked most of the rest of the way. Riding bareback is going to be much harder to learn than regular riding!

Thabo Nohana and Leluma
aka
Andrew Dernovsek and Thunder

10 May 2008

Ketane Men's Lifting Group

Ntate Mokete and I had some extra time and extra cement so we decided to build our own weights for bench presses. We used 5L metal paint buckets and an old pipe to build it. The 5L buckets are a bit small, but it was the only metal buckets we could find. There are plastic 10L, but they won’t stick to the cement. Once the cement dries the buckets will come off, and this will make the weight easy to break.

It turned out pretty well, and we have begun putting it to good use. Some of the other teachers on the compound were also interested. Before dinner we have a lifting and chatting. It’s usually dark by that time, so we just lift and talk about whatever. I’ve taught them about proper lifting techniques, different exercises we can do with the one bar, and the importance of ‘spotting’ each other. It has been a fun and healthy way to interact with the other guys in the area.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
8 May 2008

Oasis Ha Thabo Nohana

...and electricity arrives at Ha Thabo Nohana. Today I set up, wired, and did all the installation for the solar panel that the bishop gave me. The panel puts out 20v on a sunny day.

I fastened the panel to my thatch roof with heavy wire. I then ran the wires through my roof and across the room to end near my table. It actually was pretty easy. The red wire goes to red and the black goes to…yep you guessed it black. The wiring underneath the panel was a bit more difficult, but still pretty easy if you can follow instructions.

So the panel is now permanently fixed on my roof and hooked up to a car battery next to my table. I have a power inverter that I attach to the battery when I am ready to use it. This converts the electricity from the 12v output of the battery to a 120w or 220w output that I need to run things like my laptop.

Everything works, and needless to say I’m all smiles. Since I arrived at my run-down mud hut in the middle of nowhere we have: installed a hot bath, running water, a bookshelf, a solid door, carpet, various knick knacks, and now…electricity (kind of). What more could I possible ask for? After living with quite literally nothing for more than 6 months I can quite honestly say I’ve earned it. My house has become an oasis in the middle of rural Lesotho, 7 hours from the nearest thing resembling a town.
Now, to spread the oasis...

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
5 May 2008

Paying Last Respects

I attended my first full funeral here in Lesotho today. The estranged father of two of my students died. Although he spent the last few years of his life far away from Ketane without caring for his wife and children, he was still given a full funeral and buried in the family’s plot.

Among other things the funeral gave a full account of the gender inequalities that are still very much a part of life here. The man abandoned his wife and eight children, never sending them a cent home to help his family. Nonetheless, when he died, the family was forced to have a lavish funeral. They slaughtered two sheep and a cow (worth a lot of money here in Lesotho). They also were forced into 6 months of mourning by the husband/father’s parents. They had to entertain and feed the whole village and give speeches on what a great man he was.

If the wife of a man dies in Lesotho, there is usually a much smaller funeral. The man is not forced into mourning, and can remarry as soon as he is ready. It was just unfortunate to see all of this happen with a family that I am so connected to. None of them complained, and they all just did their ‘duty’ in burying their estranged father/husband.

The actual funeral is very unique to Lesotho. The night before burial the immediate family stays awake all night and holds a sort of vigil. The next morning other close friends arrive. The funeral service is composed of a series of speeches about the person. The speeches usually vary from talking about his/her life to their accomplishments or just how they were in general.

The speeches can last anywhere from 1-2 hours to all day. After the speeches the men and women split up. The men carry the body and all go to the burial site together. The women follow behind and sometimes sing or cry, but they remain at a distance.

The actual burial is a very important time for male friends and family members. Each man can take a turn shoveling dirt into the grave. The immediate family will call out by name those it wants to come help fill the grave with dirt, and others can volunteer. Through all this the women watch from a distance.

After the burial is finished, the people go back to the family’s house or compound and have a feast. This is where the slaughtered sheep and cows are eaten. It is customary to help provide food for this feast if you are able. For example two days before the funeral I went with a garbage bag full of cabbage, spinach, beetroot, squash, and canned corned beef to help the family with the feast. This was also the time for my formal condolences, and serves as a visitation before the funeral for close friends.

This funeral wasn’t as sad as others I have seen, and honestly everyone seemed to take it in stride. I had the feeling that the entire affair was a cultural formality. I did ask about this, and this was indeed the case. The man was so estranged that no one really seemed that sad. However, as his village they did him the honor of giving him a proper burial.

I ate quickly, and then left. The silver lining is that my two students (and eight children of the family) are now eligible to receive government and non-governmental organization assistance as single orphans (meaning they have lost one parent). They were basically already single orphans and their poor mother was struggling to provide and send them to school. Now, they can hopefully receive some help that will make life and education easier.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
3 May 3008

Rocky Down, Soccer Team Up

There are only 4 secondary schools in the Ketane area, and they are spread very far apart. They do all have soccer teams though. Last week we scheduled with Telle Secondary School. Since it is a Friday, we let the students out early, and we all made the trip to Telle to have our soccer match. The boys all left way before me. Since I have the horse now, I’m much less likely to walk, and Telle is about 8km away.

Rocky is back to normal, and running again. Well I should say he was back to normal and running again. I was galloping on the horse, and Rocky was sprinting along next to us, and occasionally in front of us. He was actually doing so well that he kept looking back as if to say, “Come on Thabo, hurry up!” Well he looked back a little too long, tripped stumbled and then Leluma and I proceeded to gallop right over him trampling him as we went. Oh poor Rocky. He’s night even a year old and he’s almost been killed twice. He limped along the rest of the way, but again, miraculously, I don’t think anything is broken. We’ll see I guess.

I made it to Telle just after the boys got there, and we had about an hour to hang out before the game. The soccer fields here are generally ridiculously imbalanced and this field was no exception. It was built literally on a hill so that one team was constantly running up hill and the other down.

Much to my surprise, it was the team going uphill that had the advantage. The reason was that the downhill team couldn’t control the ball or pass well. So the ball would go out of bounds before they could control it.

My guys played hard, and the game ended in a 1-1 tie. Yes, I do agree that any sport that has the chance to end in a 0-0 or 1-1 tie is simply not worth playing. Nobody goes home happy. Although this time my team was very happy because they had tied a bigger school with bigger boys that usually beats them. Apparently, they had been trash talking all around Ketane the past week that they were going to womp us. It is funny that our entire population of boys at the secondary school (11) has to play on the team. If one is sick we are down a man.

All in all it was a pretty fun day. I got to interact with some new students and teachers from Telle, and coach my soccer team. Leluma, Rocky, and I scurried home after the match and made it just before dark. Rocky was limping considerably less by the time we got home, so I figure he’ll be ok. Here’s to Hoping!

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
2 May 2008

Wind Turbine and Solar Panel

We are trying to bring a bit of electricity to Ketane, and are planning to use several different methods. Today, we set up a wind turbine. The turbine turns with the wind; this creates electricity and charges a battery. We then use a power inverter to turn the 12v battery power into our desired wattage.

When I came to Lesotho I brought a nice foldable solar panel. It charges using the sun, but not a lot. I currently use it to charge a small battery. I then connected the small battery to a light bulb, and this is enough to give me light at night. I figured that my eyes don’t need the extra strain of constantly trying to read and work by candle light. The whole set-up (excluding the solar panel) cost me about M175 ($25). The solar cost $300, but it was worth it. So although I am able to charge a small battery, we are looking for ways to electrify our bigger items (printer, laptop, etc.).

To bring real electricity we needed bigger 12v batteries. I got one, and the priest has one. The batteries are nice, but my little solar panel is just too small to give them a good charge. That is why we are now trying different methods of creating our own electricity. The priest had the generator which when turned puts out electricity. We hand-carved, painted, and put together the turbine panels. Today, we mounted the whole operation on the roof including putting up the support structure and wiring everything.

It took all day, but when the wind is blowing the turbine puts out between 10 and 12v of electricity. This is enough to give the bigger battery a good charge, and in turn charge a laptop once a day.

Also, the last time I was in Mohale’s Hoek the bishop gave me a big solar panel. I am mounting it on my house, and see if I can set-up a good system to get regular electricity. It will be a challenge as I don’t know anything about wiring really, but a challenge is something I’m always up for.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
1 May 2008

Winter Crops Planted

Much to the amusement of my Basotho friends, I have begun planting winter crops. Here, it is autumn, and it will soon be winter. So according to my reading, there are certain crops that will do fine in the winter, and can be very productive. They won’t be killed by cold, and as long as I can water them they should grow. Of course, this is all according to reading that I’ve done. Everyone here thinks I’m two sheets to the wind, but they have said that if it actually works they will try it next year.

I’ve planted cabbage, American spinach, carrots, Swiss chard (Sesotho spinach), beets, Japanese greens, and cauliflower. I put the cabbage in pretty late, so I just seeded all the rows. I’m not really expecting all of it to do well, so I figure this will give me my best shot. I really hope the books are right though and I don’t look silly come winter! Only time will tell, but the books haven’t let me down so far.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
29 April 2008

Training to Train

I have been asked to train the new group of Community Health and Economic Development (CHED) Peace Corps Volunteers specifically in the HIV/AIDS area. This past week I attended a ‘training of trainers” in Maseru for those of us who will teach the new group of volunteers.

I actually enjoyed the training, and took away techniques that I will be able to use when teaching English at Ketane. It was interesting to be a part of the planning. Although it has been a lot of work to plan each session, it has been wonderful to be able to design the training sessions and add important things where necessary. The group as a whole did a nice job planning.

When the new volunteers do arrive, I will be the resident trainer for week 5 of their training. I will train on HIV/AIDS prevention, behavior change communication, the role of religion in Lesotho, orphans and vulnerable children, traditional healers, and village health workers. Also, as the resident trainer for that week I will attend all of their training sessions and serve as a volunteer resource.

I did have the chance after our training of trainers finished to go to Bloemfontein, South Africa. This is always wonderful. It is almost like going to America. Although there is always a strange feeling in South Africa, because the mall and some of the stores are nicer than some I’ve seen in America. There is even a movie theater with newly released films. It is amazing that places like this can exist, and just a few miles away lies Lesotho, where you’re lucky to find a bootlegged copy of some movie you don’t even want to see. I will head back to Ketane on Monday. I submitted a proposal to begin using the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) to regularly fly back and forth to my site. This would turn my 20 hour round trip journey into a 1 hour round trip. I’m hopeful, keep your fingers crossed!

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
25 April 2008

Keyhole Garden Demo

A village that I have not been to before, and is not on our list of targeted villages, Sekhutlong, asked Ntate Mokete and I to come and teach about HIV/AIDS and keyhole gardens. This was a huge morale boost for us because it meant that people were very interested and excited about what we are doing here.

At Sekhutlong, they were very prepared for us. The chief used to work as a security guard in Maseru, and had a very nice house. He even had a solar setup. The people had gathered rocks, aloe, manure, ash, grass, sticks, and dirt already so this made the garden demonstration much easier. They made a beautiful garden, and worked very hard. It was nice to get into a new village, and meet some different people also. They were so hospitable and welcoming. They were well organized, and it was obvious that they all knew their places on the building team. The men placed the rocks and material in the best way. The women, even the old grandmothers, carried the rocks and wheel-barrowed the rest of the material. It worked well, and we finished just after lunch. They chief invited us in and gave us meat (an extreme rarity here) and papa (ground cornmeal). We went home satisfied with a job well done.

When we got back my secondary school boys’ team was playing soccer. So I watched and coached them for the last part of the game. We have just enough (11) to make a team. They really enjoy it, and I think they like having me as a coach. I really don’t know that much about soccer, but I can yell at them to move the ball forward, and play defense just as well as anyone else. I do also still remember some drills from when I played soccer. They had never had drills before, but we are working on it.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
16 April 2008

A Brief Update

First let me update you on a few things that have given my poor family some very worried phone calls. Rocky is alive, and so far uninfected. He limps around happily and although his wound is still oozing I decided to let him heal it ‘his way.’ This seems to be working, and the wound is closing. It did not get inflamed, so I didn’t put him on my antibiotics. I don’t know if you can give Keflex to a dog anyway.

Secondly, the ‘crazy guy’ is only ‘crazy’ during the peak harvesting season of marijuana. I found out that he always goes crazy during this time every year, and then is fine for the rest of the year. The villagers believe it has something to do with him smoking copious amounts of marijuana. I do still have altercations with him. The people in the village have tried everything to keep us all safe from him.

The whole subject did cause me to think about the issue of mental illness here in the developing world. Although this particular man turned out not to be mentally ill, it did make me wonder what happens to those who actually are. It is a difficult situation. The people here barely have the resources to look after themselves, let alone someone who is constantly disturbing life in the village. When people go to the clinic, they go for multi-drug resistant TB, and myriads of other life threatening illnesses. I don’t think someone with mental illness would find the support they need here. It is unfortunate, and it is things like these that always make me happy to be from America.

They tied an ox yoke onto the drugged-out crazy guy, today. I think he killed another animal. He doesn’t seem to mind though. He’s smoking his dagga (marijuana) as happily as before and carrying the yoke around with him. Yet another site I never thought I’d see.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
15 April 2008

The Village Crazy

Ok, so I haven’t mentioned it before, but this past month I discovered our village crazy person. All my time here I have never met him, or he was fine. However, he seems to have gone completely insane. Where do I start?

I think I can begin a few weeks back when I first noticed him basking in the sun like a lizard on my lawn in front of my house. Upon returning I found him there. In Lesotho (maybe everywhere I don’t know) I am extremely territorial and protective of my personal space. People are rarely allowed to enter my house, and I usually talk them off the premises as well. When I approached the house he threw down his hat started bowing, singing, and jumping up and down. He seemed innocent enough and was flattering so I just greeted him and smiled.

After a while I ‘helped’ him away from my house taking two knives from him in the process. I asked others in the community about him. It turns out he goes crazy every year around this time. I am not sure, but I believe it has something to do with him smoking copious amounts of marijuana.

After that incident, it has been bad encounter after bad encounter. He began trying to take things and succeeded on different occasions in taking Rocky, Leluma, the rope for my horse, and a helmet. Fortunately, everyone in the village knows everything I own, where I’m at, and what I’m doing at all times (I stand out a bit). So he wasn’t able to make it out of the village with any of those things. I was patient with him time and time again. I explained to him very carefully that if he continued to bother me I would not be his friend anymore.

I wasn’t the only one he was bothering. He killed two pigs and a cow with his dogs, and left animals in various villages far away from ours. We tried taking him to the police, but they said they didn’t know what to do with a crazy person and booked a psychological appointment for him at the clinic. I also took away a hatchet and a metal pipe that he brought near my house.

The chief, at a loss and not sure what to do, handcuffed him and just left him handcuffed. That didn’t work he just walked around everywhere handcuffed, and continued to bother us. In the beginning, I felt very bad for him and was even thinking about how to get him psychological help. However, after three weeks of constant pestering, I was at my wits end.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he tried to come into my house last night. I almost beat him. I was so close, but my patient side and sense of chivalry won out. They had cuffed his feet and his hands, so he couldn’t really defend himself. I just chased him away with Rocky and a stick. Ohhhhh Lesotho. This wasn’t in the brochure when I signed up for the Peace Corps!

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
12 April 2008

Ha Phole Like Home

Rocky is doing better, but still in a pretty sorry state. I am still hoping that the wound won’t get infected, but it looks pretty gnarly right now.

Ntate Mokete and I went to Ha Phole today, sans Rocky, to teach about Keyhole Gardens. The success of Ha Khojane was so resounding that we have decided to expand the project where possible. Two more villages, Sekhutlong and Ha Masoopa, have written to me and requested that we come to teach about HIV/AIDS and also the gardens. They are both close to Ha Khojane, and must have seen all the gardens there. So, it looked like rain this morning. As promised, it drizzled on us all day. That didn’t, however, stop us from teaching the Keyhole Garden. The people weren’t exactly filled with enthusiasm, as we were building in the rain, but we did get the job done. There is very little to work with at Ha Phole, so it was difficult to find all of the necessary pieces for the garden. We improvised where practicable and came up with a decent model. We didn’t finish the entire garden because we were soaked and cold. We left it for them to finish. I don’t know if they will, but I sure hope so! The gardens would be excellent for a place with as little water as Ha Phole.

The walk down was quick and muddy. We were happy to get home. I always enjoy going to Ha Phole. I think the openness of the mountain plateau really reminds me of home, Pueblo, Colorado.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
12 April 2008

Committing to Hard Work

After Church I met with some of our Lifestyle Ambassadors. If you remember, our Lifestyle Ambassadors our young people who were trained to be trainers. They were trained in HIV/AIDS prevention, alcohol and drug abuse, self-esteem, and a myriad of other issues. They came to me a while back with the idea for a candle project. I had them do a market survey after our last meeting, and then scheduled this meeting. They did a pretty good job especially since most of them had never done anything like a market survey. They found shop owners at Ketane who agreed to sell them, and ascertained that there would be people to buy them. We planned the next steps of our project, and talked about how we would proceed.

I concluded by showing them my garden, and the ‘garden’ of the HIV-Positive Support Group, which has over 30 members. Mine is a flourishing jungle, and although the HIV-Support Group was given tools, seeds, land, and even irrigation equipment their garden is non-existent. Everything died.

I showed them hard work versus not-working. They said they understood the message I had given them and were committed to working hard.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
6 April 2008

Ran Over Rocky

Well, we ran over Rocky today. The priest and I went to Ketane. Rocky is such a champ, and just can’t stand to be left behind. Whether I’m on a horse or in a car he runs along the whole way. It is still summer here, and as such the air is still sweltering. So Rocky sprinted the whole 5km to Ketane, and the whole 5km back alongside the car. By the end though, he was tired and hot. We stopped to talk to someone, and Rocky found some shade…underneath the car.

We started moving and almost immediately herd a shrill yelp followed by continued howling and crying. I didn’t see what happened, but I knew immediately. I was already thinking of what on earth I was going to use to ‘put him down.’ I got out of the car, and he had quite a bit of blood on one of his legs. He was limping considerably, but he was limping not holding the leg completely off the ground. So I got in the back of the truck with him for the last little bit. He had a deep wound just at his elbow, and several other cuts. They were all still bleeding. I got him back to the house, and actually found a use for my Peace Corps med kit. I stopped the bleeding, and tried to keep him calm, and the wound wrapped.

Amazingly, I don’t think he broke his leg. He is a damaged little puppy, but I don’t think I’ll have to kill him. He keeps curling up in a little ball in the smallest corners he can find in my house, but he is keeping the bandage on. My biggest worry now will be infection, especially in the big open wound. I don’t know if Polysporin works on dogs, but I gave it a try. Only time will tell. I sure hope he lives though. He is my only confidant out here in the mountains.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
3 April 2008

Computer School Update

About a month ago, the bishop gave me a larger solar panel to put on my roof. This has allowed me to give my laptop a full charge once a day. As a result, I decided to go ahead and begin computer classes. My first class has eight students. We have been learning for 2 weeks. Some of my students are students at the secondary school while others are men and women from the area. The classes have been going well, but slow. They are learning, but it is such a new thing to them that I have to teach even the most basic aspects. It is really funny watching someone who has never used a mouse before try to navigate around the screen. All in all though they are doing well.

So far I have taught them the basics of Microsoft Word 2007 and how to use the mouse and keyboard. After 2 weeks they have all written a letter which contains underlining, bold, a bulleted list, a numbered list, and proper spelling. It is very rewarding to see them beginning to understand the different aspects and to know that I am teaching an invaluable life skill.

The teachers for the primary and secondary should return soon, and they will be my second group of students. 9 registered, and I am just waiting for them to return. The original idea was to focus the training on them while I was raising money for the computer school, so that by the time I left they would be able to continue training the students and other members of the community. But no one has donated!

I think that some of you may be scared off by my lofty fundraising goals. I have been working to remedy this and reduce the cost in any way I can. I called a meeting at my village, and asked if they would be willing to build a rondoval for the school. They said they would be happy to do this, and this will cut a large portion of the costs. I also thought that instead of a 2 solar panel and 6 computer school, I will begin by asking for 2 computers and 1 solar panel. I large solar panel costs roughly $1,000 and I believe I could also find 2 desktops for $1,000, I could get very cheap chairs desks, batteries and wires for about $700. So I will be reducing the requested amount to $2,700. This will build a smaller, rondoval computer school which will have the same value of sustainability as the larger computer school. If you have comments, suggestions, etc. please feel free to post a comment or a note.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
27 July 2008

Water Project Update

Thank you all for the support of the water project. It has been wonderful to have this encouragement from everyone back home. The actual plans for the project are underway. The government is said to be bringing water to Ha Phole, so I have made plans to bring water to the next village on the list, Ha Sekhola. Ha Sekhola is in a similarly desperate situation, and the people there have been getting sick quite regularly.Three weeks ago we measured the pipe distance and drew up plans for construction with the village chief. We located the source of fresh spring water. We will be using over 2,000 Meters of pipe and have 4 different collection/disbursement tanks. The water will reach 3 sections of the spread out village and the local primary school.We have not begun construction because we are waiting for approval from the local government. Things have been bogged down here, but hopefully we will be able to get to work soon. It is an ambitious plan, but thanks to your support we are ready to undertake it. I am also planning to help the farmers in Mafikeng with a water distribution tank. This tank is ready to go, and the people have begun gathering supplies. I will supply cement to help. The tank will bring irrigation to the fields of the whole village. We are using as little outside resources as possible to complete both of these projects so as to maximize the money that we have. With hard work and a little luck I hope to soon be posting pictures of the completed projects.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
18 July 2008

Pig Project Update

Thanks to all of you the pig project is now well underway. Napoleon (I think I named him that, I usually just call him ‘the pig’) is getting big. After I received all of your donations I bought a female pig aptly named ‘the pig’s wife.’ When I got her she was a tiny thing, and still is. I have been trying to feed them well, but she’s still quite small. They are doing well and seem to be a happily married couple, for the most part. The pig does occasionally try to mount the pig’s wife, since she’s about a quarter of his size this sends her scurrying around the sty screaming like a banshee. At night the cuddle up next to each other though and seem happy enough. I tell my students that they are a faithful happily married couple.

Awhile back I finished the sty so they can’t climb out. I used mostly rocks and it didn’t cost any money. I was going to build them a nice roof, but I instead decided to save the money for food and make a home-made roof. I think it ended up looking something like a field expedient lean-to. I gathered up all the old corrugated iron I could find and used that to cover where they normally sleep. For the rest I cut trees for supports and used weeds for thatching. I wasn’t allowed to use the nice thatch grass like I have on my rondoval as they do use it for housing, but I think it turned out nice enough. The sty isn’t the prettiest thing, but my only expense was nails. I will also cement part of the sty floor eventually before the piglets come.

Anyway, the pictures really tell most of the story. The project is great, and from this point on it’s a waiting game. I teach about proper methods for raising the pigs when I can. I should have the two pigs separated I know, but right now they are ok. The people are interested, and the school children help me feed them with their scraps from lunch. Thank you again for making this project possible. I will keep you posted with future updates.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
17 July 2008

A Letter From Lesotho

I am often asked why I joined the Peace Corps. What would make someone travel halfway across the globe to work in a remote, rugged, austere, harsh environment? What causes any man to challenge the unknown, the adventurous, the burdensome, and the trying? Whether the answer is that it is an intrinsic quality in man or whether it is a personal calling from within, I know not. What I know is to find that which satisfies your soul, floods your heart with fervor, and provides your daily existence with meaning is something uncommon and needs to be cherished and embraced.

To see a clear path in what was previously shrouded in darkness, to see the way so clearly that one only need make the footprints on that unique path, to feel consumed by your passion to continue and achieve the end goal, this is what I have found, and this is what I strive for. Some would say this is a calling, but it is not a calling, it is not something that can be fit into the narrow constraints of one phase of life, rather it is an open view to the possibilities of the future and a path leading me through the sands of time.

The rural living here is painfully harsh. The people here are sick, depressed, and dying. The divine spark, that which separates us from the beasts of the earth and the fish of the sea, shines brighter than ever here. It is a light which must not lose its flare and never grow dim. When faced with overwhelming odds, as are those that the people of Lesotho face, a person can begin to lose hope, to lose faith, and to settle into complacency. Complacency, an oft unseen trap of evil. The people here need help; most of their suffering is the inevitable result of being born in Lesotho.

As an American, as a man, as a human being, hope is something that I can give. Whether it is teaching a child English in a decrepit classroom, helping a patient suffering from HIV, or showing a starry eyed dreamer a better way of life, I came to be an instrument in the lives of others. An instrument of hope. No, I cannot alleviate the suffering of a country, or even that of a village. However, I can make a difference in the lives of people who have suffered more than most can bear. Even if it is only a difference in the lives of two people, or one, it is enough. I work here to bring hope to the destitute, and to share ideals of a better way of living.

As I approach one year of service in Lesotho I look back at why I came to Lesotho, what I have accomplished, and look ahead for a way forward. I have taught 27 children essential English and life skills. I have spoken at 32 villages about HIV/AIDS prevention, PMTCT, stigma reduction, living a healthy life, and other HIV issues. Many of these villages I have visited two or three times. I have successfully turned a profit in gardening while teaching about crop diversity, proper nutrition, and differing farming techniques. I have instructed keyhole gardens at four villages and watched as the people took the reins and built over 70 gardens. I have helped to train 80 ‘Lifestyle Ambassadors,’ 80 Home Based Caregivers, and 20 local chiefs on everything from HIV/AIDS to self-esteem to drug and alcohol abuse. I have various projects in progress including: a water project, library, piggery, candle project, and a widows association. Tomorrow, I begin teaching computer classes out of my rondoval.

Am I making a difference in the lives of the people here? I think so. Am I glad I joined the Peace Corps? Yes, I am. It has been a very rewarding and fulfilling experience. I have taken away just as much as I have put into the experience. To look forward, do I see myself extending my Peace Corps term? No, I don’t. I have given all that I am and all that I have to offer to the people of Ketane, Lesotho for one year. I will continue to do so for one more. The next step on life’s path will be outside of my mud hut. The next step will continue on the path of service, and into the unknown.

The next year will be a difficult one, although hopefully not as strenuous as the first. The first year was filled with uncertainties and adjustments. I remember when I first decided on Peace Corps, I thought I would be a disliked oddity in a sea of long hair, big beards, and liberal ideals. What I found was a diverse group of individuals who came from all walks of life to work in Lesotho as grassroots development professionals. Although most don’t wave the flag as much as I, they do bring distinctively varied qualities to the table.

In the Peace Corps itself, I have found a strong emphasis on supporting American ideals while learning from our host country. I am the only American most of the people in my area will meet and as such, I conduct myself accordingly. A Peace Corps Volunteer, in my opinion, is not just development worker, but also an ambassador of the American people. I show people that all Americans aren’t like the stories they see on CNN or the movies they watch from Hollywood. It is something that is necessary, and helps to enhance America’s global security (even if it is in the smallest way) by showing foreigners what America really is, how big our hearts are, and how wide our smiles stretch. Or to put it into the words of two Marines, “You guys go into a country so we don’t have to.”

In the next year, my final year of Peace Corps service, I hope to continue to bring the American ideal, give hope to those who have abandoned it, and help those I can with sustainable grassroots development. I have gotten through the past year in part because of all my supporters back home. The people of Ketane have benefited greatly as a result of your donations to my sustainable development projects. Not everyone is a Peace Corps Volunteer, nor does everyone need be. However, the support you provide me, and the people of Ketane, makes all the difference. It is my dream to turn a computer class made up of nine teachers in my rondoval into a fully sustained computer school before I leave Lesotho. Only you, my supporters, the unseen helping hand, can make this a reality.

I am looking forward to my next step into my final Peace Corps year. In Lesotho, I have found that which satisfies my soul, fills my heart with passion, and gives every new day meaning (Now, if only I could find a girl that made me feel the same way). What I have found is not Lesotho, not the Peace Corps, but a way of living that supersedes self and provides understanding even in the most arduous environment and situation. The next year is sure to be filled with ups, downs, tragedy, and triumph. I wish you all the best, and keep reading!

Andrew
15 July 2008
“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves” –Sir Edmund Hillary

10 Minutes Notice

We had a short workshop today. They only told me about it the day of, “Hey Thabo can you talk to all the village chiefs and Home Based Caregivers in 10 Minutes?”
Sigh…yeah what can I do but laugh, maybe smack forehead, and get ready to speak.

Seriously, they asked me to speak to all of the key stakeholders at Ketane, in Sesotho with 10 minutes notice. I saved my complaining for later, pulled together a quick speech, and was off to the races.

I decided to talk about why I became a Peace Corps Volunteer, why volunteerism, community, and country are important. I also borrowed from our Peace Corps founder and turned it into an ‘ask not’ speech. The response was overwhelmingly positive. They seemed to grasp the same message that you should not ask what can the chief, clinic, or other people do for me, but what can I do for my community, what can I do for Ketane and make it a better place for all.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
2 April 2008

Connecting Ketane Lesotho to Pueblo Colorado

The latest news from Ketane, Lesotho is that we have officially started a pen pal program here with Pueblo Colorado. I would like to thank teacher and previous Peace Corps Volunteer, Mr. Cody Festerling and the students in his class at Highland Park Elementary School, Pueblo Colorado for all their hard work in making this pen pal program successful. These are the students here who are connecting with the Pueblo students: The response of my students on hearing they would be getting pen pals from the United States can only be described as overjoyed. They are so excited to be writing to students in America, and all of their teachers have seen them trying markedly harder to hone their English skills.

The letters from the US were beautifully colored, and many had pictures. Our students did their best and although we can’t attach pictures many produced works of art. This project has really gotten them energized to study and learn English!

A big thank you to the Rev. Ken Butcher of Ascension Church, Pueblo, Colorado for being the brain behind the project, and serving as a liaison between Cody and me.

Thabo Nohana aka Andrew Dernovsek
26 March 2008

42 Gardens for 42 Households

It was a busy day. I woke up early and rode to Ha Khojane to conduct follow up Monitoring and Evaluation on the keyhole garden pilot project. I was astounded when the chief showed me the work they had done. I could not have possibly hoped for better results.

Amazingly, in just a few short weeks, they have constructed 42 beautiful keyhole gardens. 42, a garden for every household in the village. To my knowledge this is the first village in Ketane to achieve such a feat. All I gave them was knowledge, and a good strong pep talk, and together they did it. It is motivating to see the people take the initiative and begin to make a difference in their own lives. Needless to say, plans are underway to extend the project to more villages.

I really had to wale on Leluma on the way there. He’s just like that sometimes, stubborn and insolent. He ran us off the road 4 times. I was kicking, hitting, and yanking the bridle half the way there. It’s the price I pay for riding a stallion.
Rocky, although doing well, always fights the dogs at Ha Khojane. Today was no exception. He really is a well behaved all around ‘good dog,’ but when provoked he can get pretty nasty. He’s getting close to full size now, and is bigger than most Basotho dogs. He is still very friendly (I trained him that way because of my proximity to the schools) even with other dogs, unless they attack him first. Anyway, he fought 4 of them in the road today. One came after him while we were riding by and the others joined the fracas piecemeal. I usually just let him do his thing, and today he messed them up. Two more came when he was fighting the four, so Leluma and I decided to even the odds. We ran them over, and that ended that.

The only rule of having a dog in Lesotho is that if I am visiting someone’s house Rocky can’t win. I usually call him back. When I do that he sits next to me and relinquishes the dominant position. However, if we are not visiting someone than anything and everything is fair. The same goes for Rocky, if he’s not with me, and not at the house, then he’s open target practice for sharp-aimed Basotho rock throwers.

Anyway, we came back and had a quick lunch. I then met with our Lifestyle Ambassadors. They came to me a while back with an idea for a candle project. They followed up with me (passing my necessary motivation test), and now we are seeing how we can make the project a reality. I am going to include it in my PEPFAR grant proposal that I’m writing, and hopefully we will make it happen. They seem motivated and have good ideas on how to make the project work. I gave them market research for homework, and will meet with them again next week.

Thabo Nohana (Andrew Dernovsek)
29 March 2008

Ahh for an Ice Cube

We finished our wonderful trip through South Africa, and I am now safely back at site. Mom and Dad are safely back home. We drove the magnificently stunning garden route stopping at many wonderful places along the way. Our final destination of Cape Town also proved to be marvelous. The sights, sounds, tastes, and smells are simply too much to write about and must be experienced personally. We did the whole trip sitting in the lap of luxury. Although wonderful, it left me with bittersweet emotions.

You see, when you live in the middle of nowhere, have no services, no phone, no electricity, eat rice beans and mixed vegetables everyday, carry out all your household tasks in a 5 meter circle called a rondaval, live 6 hours from anything remotely resembling a real town, hardly ever speak English like its your native language, and are essentially permanently camping, you get used to it. Yes, after ten months in Lesotho I can honestly say that not only do I not mind all of those things, but I really enjoy the life here. However, ohhh however, when you get all the things you’ve been missing back, when you see what life could be like, and when the smallest of those things is a hundred times better than what you’re living with, man is it rough. I had an ice cube in Cape Town. A real frozen ice cube. It held even more magnificence and mysticism in its cool kiss than when I had it, what feels like, all those years ago in that far off place called America. Ahh. Well I’m back in the mountains and I’m about to find out if memories can be enough to sustain you.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
15 March 2008

The Man Behind the Man

Yesterday, I did the proper thing at my village, which is to introduce my visitors to the chief and the Church. The people were very impressed that I translated at Church, and people have come up to me two weeks later from my far off villages and said they heard I was now a translator of Sesotho. My Sesotho isn’t that great, but just speaking it conversationally bumps my credibility way up.

Today, I took Dad to Ha Phole. This is one of the tougher and more rigorous village visits because of its location. It is up in the mountains and inaccessible by horses. However, it is one of my most favorite places because of the gorgeous mountain plateau. Today only cemented my opinion of the village, as we had a wonderful day with perfect weather. The wheat is almost ready to harvest and the sun shone down on it making those oft talked about golden fields. To see it in the backdrop of my favorite mountain village was truly a pleasure.

I had not given my HIV/AIDS presentation at Ha Phole yet, and I figured that today would be a good day to do the presentation and give Dad an idea of what my work is like. I told them my father was coming, and that we would speak together so we drew a decent sized crowd. They were excited to meet him and listened intently. Lesotho is a strongly patriarchal society and as such they were eager to meet the man behind the man.

In addition to fielding many questions on HIV we talked about a future keyhole garden project. I think Dad really enjoyed the whole day. We went to the edge of the plateau and saw the Kingdom in the Sky from the sky.

Peaches are in season, and in Lesotho everything on the path is pretty much fair game. We stuffed ourselves with peaches and had an enjoyable walk down the mountain.

Andrew Dernovsek (Thabo Nohana)
3 March 2008

Magical Spot

The exciting news this week is that my parents came to visit me, here in Ketane, Lesotho! And I thought that everyone figured I fell off the face of the earth. I’m not going to bore you with most of the day to day, but I will write about some of our most interesting days at Ketane. Today, for example, we had a very fun day, and I had the chance to showcase the beauty of rural Africa. I took Mom and Dad to a swimming hole I discovered a while back. It is high above one of my villages, nestled in the side of a mountain overlooking the vast Ketane valley.

Mom rode Leluma most of the way because it is quite a hike. The route is a narrow steep path. She rode quite well. It was a good hot day, and we arrived ready for a picnic and a swim.

The swimming hole itself is absolutely picturesque. I couldn’t ask for a nicer summer getaway. It is far above the village, and lies inside a small gulley on the mountain. Over thousands of years, the river has carved its path into the mountainside, and more recently it has smoothed the solid rock that makes up the riverbed. A few kilometers above you can see the stream’s waterfall as it crashes down from the top of the mountain plateau into the valley. It moves quickly, but slows by the time it reaches my magical spot. This special place, the swimming hole, is nestled in between trees and gorge, which gives just enough cover to allow privacy. The mountain slopes downward and the valley below opens outward allowing for a perfect reflection on the meaning of life.