Working Girl

So basically my life consists of work right now. I’ve also noticed that I start just about every blog with the work “so.” I thought about why I do this and this is what I came up with: I basically write these things the way I think/speak, therefore, when I start all these little stories of my life I would start with “so” if I was talking to you in person. Clearly I’m super bored right now and have filled a solid 3 minutes with a random side note.

I’ve been working with my organization GROW to figure out what I’m going to be doing there. Things are going better, and I guess I’m sort of lucky to have some structure…I’ve also been trying to get out and meet people and learn about my community. When I say my community I’m referring to the camp town. Right now I still don’t know anything at all about my village, although, I have ascertained that there is a bar somewhere in the vicinity of my house because I can hear the music at 3AM. I plan on learning more about my village soon though, so no worries on that front.

I’ve been going out to the rural villages a bit lately. Let me describe to you what these trips entail. (1) a long trip in some old pickup truck (extended cab), (2) the “roads” are bad and therefore you are slamming into the side of the car the whole time, (3) you are squished in with other people (this week I was one of 4 grown adults in the back seat of the truck for at least 2 hours), (4) you become invisible and the people around you speak lightening fast Sesotho, until they make fun of you for something, (5) you never get to go pee and are always starving by the time you get back. Usually I’m at each village for at most an hour and I don’t really do that much. So clearly this is time well spent. Just yesterday the truck actually DROVE OFF THE ROAD! Mind you, there are no rails to prevent you from careening off the mountain. Luckily we slid into the mountain instead of off it—plus there is no cell phone reception that far out. Yikes.

I’m pretty excited because Rachel is in town this week so I’ll have someone to hang out with. Also, PC is coming up so hopefully I’ll get my packages! Yay! This weekend I’m going to go to Ben’s site at St James School to watch a workshop that Rachel and Violeta are giving there. And if I get my packages, I’ll stay and go on a hike with them on Sunday. (I need the ankle brace in mom’s package in order to hike). Update on the ankle: it’s neither better nor worse really. This week it was really sore, but hopefully it will heal eventually.

Anyways, I’m at work right now (so obviously consumed with things to do) and I guess I should wrap this up. Quick note first: I am rarely on the internet. It’s expensive and SUPER SLOW here, so I send my blog posts to Jess and she posts them. The same for my pictures (which are really hard to send and almost impossible to post in Mokhotlong). So don’t think that I’m ignoring you or anything if I take a while to respond to emails or FB messages, its just that I’m a broke volunteer lol. I’ll load a bunch of pics at the end of November when I’m in Maseru.