March Madness

I don’t know about all of you, but it seems to me like March FLEW by. I was lucky enough to have a lot going on. I’m just going to break it down bullet style.

1. Work. So work still isn’t ‘great,’ but at least it was busy. I am now in charge of the microloan project that GROW is doing with the other Basotho organization in Mokhotlong, Touching Tiny Lives. I have been working pretty closely with the two Americans there Kirsten and Kevin on getting things rolling. We are working with 3 groups who are starting small businesses—two chicken projects and one candle making project. Its not super exciting but it’s a chance to get stuff done. We even have to drive through a river to get to one of the groups—I’m being totally serious, we literally drive through the river.

2. Bloemfontein. I had a doctor’s appointment in Bloem and got to go down to Maseru just before my vacation. It was nice to be able to get some internet time and enjoy luxuries like Pick’n Pay and…wait for it…a movie theatre. (I did take some time to see From Paris With Love one afternoon). I had some time to kill in Bloem before my appointment so I went to the mall next door and did some shopping. Really it was just nice to be in a mall, plus it’s hard to resist the draw of new clothes. However, Maseru isn’t the greatest place to be lately because I’ts getting more and more dangerous. Two volunteers were attacked 5 mins after me and 2 others walked the same road they did on the way to where we were staying.

3. Swaziland Vacation. I went on an awesome vacation to Swazi with 4 of my friends: Kaitlin, Elissa, Rocio, and Jessica. We rented a car and drove there. Somehow it took us twice as long as it should have to get there—18 hours. But part of that was having to wait 4 hours at the Swazi border (Easter’s kind of a big deal over here). But the car ride was really fun…nothing like five 20-something girls in a car together.
We managed to check into our hostel at 2 am, at which time the guard at the night gate told us “don’t afraid.” Our hostel was really cool. We stayed at this place called Sondzela, which is inside a game reserve. We could see warthogs and emu’s, zebras, and deer looking things just walking around.
We slept in a bit on the first day because we arrived so late and then hit the craft markets. Swaz is famous for its crafts. We went to Swazi Candles and it was so cool. You can watch then hand molding the candles into awesome animal shapes. The candles are so cool that you would never actually burn them—and since I’m no millionaire I didn’t buy any. I did buy some amazing soap that they make there though. Everyone had told us to go to this place called House of Fire, so there we went. It was a really cool place with interesting architecture and mosaic tiling and quotes on the walls. Next door was this shop selling weavings—woven bowls, placemats, coasters, baskets and stuff. We LOVED the store and all bought a bunch of ‘send to America’ presents.
On Saturday we had our big adventure—white water rafting. It was crazy! We got to the river with about 12 other people and got suited up in our helmets and life jackets. The boats were two man raft/canoes. Me and Elissa were partners. Most of us had zero experience. We got into the water and started going—unfortunately I’m pretty horrible at rafting and have no gift at all for steering. We managed to go over our first rapid fine. But later on the longest rapid our luck changed. The boat flipped and we were in the water. It was by far the scariest experience of my entire life! Being from the ocean I honestly don’t recall ever being in a life jacket, and therefore didn’t know that mine was apparently not tight enough. My jacket slipped up my body and scared me to death because it made it hard to stay above water. After being in the water for what seemed like forever me and Elissa made it into one of the guide’s boats and to shore. We didn’t give up though, and we continued to the last rapid. We watched as boat after boat capsized. On our turn we almost made it when I bounced out lol. Elissa was one of the 2 ½ out of 10 boats that made it on that one. We decided to only do the ½ day rafting and left after lunch. We met up with Kaitlin and did some more craft shopping instead where we met up with Erin and her mom and god mom.

4. Spa. On our last day in Swaz we decided to go pamper ourselves by going to the spa. The spa was really fun. We got to lounge all day in the sauna and just relax. We got massages and the other girls got facials. Having never had a massage before I was totally pumped about it—especially after realizing how sore rafting can leave you. After the spa we grabbed some dinner at a really good Chinese food restaurant and set off for Bleom.

5. The long road home. We had decided to leave on Sunday night and drive through the night rather than risk getting stuck in hours of traffic at the border. We tried a short cut that a man who used to work in Maseru gave us—but that set us back about 3 hours because the border post was closed. Driving all night is both exhausting and hilarious. Elissa and Kaitlin were the drivers because no one else could drive stick, so they took turns napping in the backseat with Ro and Jess. The drive was long, but we all cheered up when we reached a town at just before midnight that had a McDonalds. Part of the ‘short cut’ put us on a pot-hole filled dirt road for 3 hours in a corn field. It was slow going but funny because we saw bunnies and owls and every once and a while Ro would wake up and yell something which would send us all into hysterics. At about 3 am we blew a tire. We got out to survey the damage and it was pretty bad…stupid pot-holes. Luckily Jess is amazing and she managed to change the tire while we all prayed that no car would drive by or stop. It wasn’t until about 5 that we stopped and took a nap on the side of the road for an hour. It wasn’t until about 12 noon that we reached Bloem and we still have no idea how it took us so long. We were all pretty much zombies but still decided to stop at the mall because some of the girls needed some things. I’ve never been so tired in my whole life. But we got on a taxi back to Maseru and were back at the PC Training Center by 5:30. There were lots of people there because everyone goes on vacation over Easter. I was awake for a full 38 hours!

6. Going Home. So I reluctantly took a taxi back home the next day—primarily because I had every intention of spending the whole of the next day sleeping. I wasn’t very lucky with taxis this trip, there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to me, which was the LAST thing I wanted. At the BB taxi rank (about half way home) I used the gross public bathroom. On the way out an ntate started yelling something at me, which I ignored because every man you walk by in the rank tries to say something to you. About 10 minutes later a police man comes up to me and tells me that you have to pay for the bathroom lol. The man who yelled at me outside the bathroom had got the policeman and followed me all the way to the other side of the rank just to collect 50 cents…

But now I’m home and getting back into the swing of things in my chilly mountains. My vacation was a huge success and was super fun.

Hope you all had good Easter holidays!