I have been back in good ol' Canada for a week and half now and have been reflecting on and remembering my experiences from Lesotho as I share pictures and stories with others. It gives me a chance to share the kinds of things I 've been writing in my journal for the past 5 weeks - the bits and pieces of my practicum in Lesotho that could not be photographed. Yes, each photo does tell a story, but there is so much more to the past 4 weeks of my life in that country that those photos cannot capture and describe.
Living in a new culture is my favorite part about traveling - there is so much inside one culture to taste, hear, see, speak, engage in.....my favorite part of Lesotho's culture, an aspect I talk a lot about, is the resiliency of the Basotho people. Their perseverance, strength and joy amidst challenges and tragedy is what makes this people the most beautiful people I have ever interacted with. They always have a smile and a laugh to share along with a "Dumela, aousi!" (hello, sister!), whether they are pushing a heavy wheelbarrow across the street or behind you in line at the market; their welcoming friendliness was so cherished.
If you've read my other blogs you would have gotten a taste of the kind of poverty and health state that is in Lesotho. As a nursing group we struggled to be from such a privileged culture and working as nurses amongst people living in poverty and with poor health and not being able to help as we would in Canada. We'd get discouraged and feel quite helpless, like we could never do enough for these people. But through a close friend and nursing student, as well as just time going by living in that place, God taught me that it is not our job to question His creation and His plans for it - He does not want us to dwell on the whys or how comes, the distressing differences between us and them. He just wants us to love them, in any way we can with what He has given us. Whether that means holding a child's hand walking down the street or giving a bracelet to a bedridden patient at the hospital.....those things do make a difference, even if they are not nursing- related, as we struggled to accept at first. Through loving them we can appreciate them; appreciate who they are in the midst of the goods and bads of where they are.
This is what makes me want to go back to Lesotho again one day. I'd like to work as a nurse and continue a bit of what we started this spring (or winter in Lesotho :P) as not only third-year nursing students, but compassionate and generous - hearted young people, and continue my learning and loving of such a unique country. I am so proud of and appreciative of the other students I went to Lesotho with and loved getting to know them as we got to know Lesotho together :)
As this is my final Snapshots of Lesotho post, over and out......and hopefully over and abroad again in the future!!!
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Highlights from Africaaaa!!!!
I'm back I'm back I'm baaaaaaack from Africa!! So the first order of business.... how was my trip? (As that is usually the first thing one asks another who has been on a long crazy faraway trip). The first words that come to my mind to describe my experiences: absolutely eye-opening and the perfect way to receive some serious self-growth.
So what are the highlights from my trip? I'll include some photos to go with them, but I want to save most of my pics to show peeps in person, as that is the best way to share what I've done and seen.
1.) Working at a public health clinic in the rural town we were living in, administering Vit. A drops to infants and weighing them.
Vit A oral drops
2.) Getting to know and taking care of our two families who lived nearby our own home. We bought them some essentials, set up long-term support arrangements and took them to the clinic at the nearby hospital.
our first family
4-year old Mawetsi
3.) Babies!! Deliveries and Pediatrics.......comforting and teaching mothers, holding children and giving them fruit snacks and coloring pages and crayons. We also did this at the community centre on Saturday mornings.
4.) The hikes we went on, especially the all-day ones into the remote mountains, accessible only by extreme 4x4ing.
Our first big hike, along a route of the Roof of Africa
5.) Pony trekking at our hosts' other guesthouse in Ramabanta. I've always loved horseback riding and had a lo of fun experiencing it in another culture, especially with my new adopted 'family' of nurses :) Meeting with the Sangoma, a Basotho traditional healer or 'medicine woman' was also a highlight of this weekend.
our hosts
the Sangoma
6.) Getting to know and having so much fun with the people I went on this trip with. We played lots of loud games of Dutch Blitz, watched movies, got excited about the delicious dinners and deserts we shared each night and traveled many miles in a cramped and bumpy hippie van for four weeks.
on our last 1- hour plane ride from SA to Lesotho!
7.) Kruger National Park in South Africa!! At the end of our practicum on our way out of Africa we spent three nights at this exotic resort and went on two full day game drives into the Park where we saw lots of the Big 5!!!
8.) Seeing so much of Africa...with all of the driving we did in Lesotho from community to community, as well as the driving in and out of Kruger in SA, we got to see and appreciate a nice bit of this huge continent and its diverse terrain that changed so often.
9.)Spending time at two schools, talking with students about each of our countries and ourselves. We all learned that while we come from different places and live in different situations, we are all still young people, students, doing our best where we are.
high school near Roma
10.) Living amongst, learning about and interacting with the Basotho people. Seeing them work, travel, interact, live. When you can walk past a Basotho woman, smile and say 'Dumela, mae', and she smiles and replies with 'Dumela, aousi!' the feeling of belonging in their culture is so cool :)
on our dinosaur-fooprint hike in Roma
a typical home in rural Lesotho
And a few of my favorite things about Lesotho specifically?
Donkeys
Passion fruit
The people!!
Our home!
Kaylee :)
Pam :D
More of my own pics (the above ones are others, mine are not made pretty yet :) are soon to come!
So what are the highlights from my trip? I'll include some photos to go with them, but I want to save most of my pics to show peeps in person, as that is the best way to share what I've done and seen.
1.) Working at a public health clinic in the rural town we were living in, administering Vit. A drops to infants and weighing them.
Vit A oral drops
our first family
4-year old Mawetsi3.) Babies!! Deliveries and Pediatrics.......comforting and teaching mothers, holding children and giving them fruit snacks and coloring pages and crayons. We also did this at the community centre on Saturday mornings.
4.) The hikes we went on, especially the all-day ones into the remote mountains, accessible only by extreme 4x4ing.
Our first big hike, along a route of the Roof of Africa5.) Pony trekking at our hosts' other guesthouse in Ramabanta. I've always loved horseback riding and had a lo of fun experiencing it in another culture, especially with my new adopted 'family' of nurses :) Meeting with the Sangoma, a Basotho traditional healer or 'medicine woman' was also a highlight of this weekend.
our hosts
the Sangoma6.) Getting to know and having so much fun with the people I went on this trip with. We played lots of loud games of Dutch Blitz, watched movies, got excited about the delicious dinners and deserts we shared each night and traveled many miles in a cramped and bumpy hippie van for four weeks.
on our last 1- hour plane ride from SA to Lesotho!7.) Kruger National Park in South Africa!! At the end of our practicum on our way out of Africa we spent three nights at this exotic resort and went on two full day game drives into the Park where we saw lots of the Big 5!!!
8.) Seeing so much of Africa...with all of the driving we did in Lesotho from community to community, as well as the driving in and out of Kruger in SA, we got to see and appreciate a nice bit of this huge continent and its diverse terrain that changed so often.
9.)Spending time at two schools, talking with students about each of our countries and ourselves. We all learned that while we come from different places and live in different situations, we are all still young people, students, doing our best where we are.
high school near Roma
10.) Living amongst, learning about and interacting with the Basotho people. Seeing them work, travel, interact, live. When you can walk past a Basotho woman, smile and say 'Dumela, mae', and she smiles and replies with 'Dumela, aousi!' the feeling of belonging in their culture is so cool :)
on our dinosaur-fooprint hike in Roma
a typical home in rural LesothoAnd a few of my favorite things about Lesotho specifically?
Donkeys
Passion fruit
The people!!
Our home!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Babies, Basotho ponies and beer!!!
We have had a busy last few days in Lesotho, doing things all over the place :) Last week I was in Labour and Delivery and Pediatrics at the hospital in Maseru, and saw one ceserean birth in the OR and another natural delivery...another Basotho boy and girl to welcome into the world! But because their practices are so diffrent from ours, I think I am done witnessing this event for now.....but the OR was a lot of fun - dressing up in the most ugly green scrubs known to mankind and seeing a similar operation as done in Canada. Actually the OR is the only similar aspect of health care in Lesotho so far.
This past weekend we went to our hosts' other guesthouse/lodge for the weekend in a town called Ramabanta, about an hour out of Roma on the most adventurous dirt roads you could image tackling in a 4x4 pickup. All of the unpaved roads are full of potholes, creeks, people walking to school or town or herding their livestock, but the ones heading into the hills are twice as bad, with giant rocks sticking up every which way which limits your speed to about 5-10 km/hour. But these are the roads that connect remote villages to each other and the rest of civilization, and everyone uses them via truck, donkey, horse or on foot. We are getting used to them though and enjoy the surprise they present at each turn.....will we make it over that rock or through this ditch or not.....?
At Ramabanta we spent one afternoon pony trekking on the smallest but toughest horses I've ever seen or ridden. They navigate through the narrowest and rockiest trails and up the most slick and steep rock faces with absolute confidence, using their tiny hooves and surefootedness that they develop as young horses. And when you use a branch as a little motivation on their rump they even get up to a good speed too, however quite bouncy as their short legs give a short-strided gait. We had a blast exploring similar trails and hills on horseback that we've been hiking and driving by on other excursions.
We went on another all-day hike on Sunday and that evening I made a big achievement.....drum roll please......I finished my first - and only, I assure you - whole beer EVER!! And it was Lesotho beer, called Maluti, to boot too :)
Only 4 more days here and then we head out on our Safari in South Africa, then home a week from tomorrow!!
This past weekend we went to our hosts' other guesthouse/lodge for the weekend in a town called Ramabanta, about an hour out of Roma on the most adventurous dirt roads you could image tackling in a 4x4 pickup. All of the unpaved roads are full of potholes, creeks, people walking to school or town or herding their livestock, but the ones heading into the hills are twice as bad, with giant rocks sticking up every which way which limits your speed to about 5-10 km/hour. But these are the roads that connect remote villages to each other and the rest of civilization, and everyone uses them via truck, donkey, horse or on foot. We are getting used to them though and enjoy the surprise they present at each turn.....will we make it over that rock or through this ditch or not.....?
At Ramabanta we spent one afternoon pony trekking on the smallest but toughest horses I've ever seen or ridden. They navigate through the narrowest and rockiest trails and up the most slick and steep rock faces with absolute confidence, using their tiny hooves and surefootedness that they develop as young horses. And when you use a branch as a little motivation on their rump they even get up to a good speed too, however quite bouncy as their short legs give a short-strided gait. We had a blast exploring similar trails and hills on horseback that we've been hiking and driving by on other excursions.
We went on another all-day hike on Sunday and that evening I made a big achievement.....drum roll please......I finished my first - and only, I assure you - whole beer EVER!! And it was Lesotho beer, called Maluti, to boot too :)
Only 4 more days here and then we head out on our Safari in South Africa, then home a week from tomorrow!!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Conquering the Roof of Africa...or at least a piece of it....
Mountains. Donkeys. Mountains. Cows. Mountains. Horses. Mountains. Sheep. Mountains. Herdboys. Mountains. Village or two. Mountains. Shrubs. Mountains. Shephard's grass hut. Mountains. Rocks. And more rocks. And more mountains. Mountains...mountains......MOUNTAINS!!!! You think you've made it to the top and another huge peak appears. And you think that when you start going downhill that means you're almost done. But you're not. You're actually not even halfway. And when the guide says that the truck is just around the corner, they dont mean neccessarily the next corner, just a corner somewhere on the way back. Yup. The Basotho have a funny sense of humour when it comes to their mountains. But they are still my new favorite. :)
Hiking in Lesotho is like experiencing an Africa Utah or Arizona, only greener and dotted by herds of the above ungulates and their shephards. We hiked along a route of the 'Roof of Africa', a trail, er, correction: uneven, jutting-with-rocks-, muddy, river-blocked, zig-zagged, track sort of thing - on which motorcross riders race across for a whole day, eight hours to tbe exact. We hiked 17km of it in about 6 hours. Up and down and zig zaggin around. It was beautiful. And tiring. And awesome. Yup.
: D
Hiking in Lesotho is like experiencing an Africa Utah or Arizona, only greener and dotted by herds of the above ungulates and their shephards. We hiked along a route of the 'Roof of Africa', a trail, er, correction: uneven, jutting-with-rocks-, muddy, river-blocked, zig-zagged, track sort of thing - on which motorcross riders race across for a whole day, eight hours to tbe exact. We hiked 17km of it in about 6 hours. Up and down and zig zaggin around. It was beautiful. And tiring. And awesome. Yup.
: D
Monday, May 16, 2011
A morning of highschool anybody?
Its dark outside. The birds are still sleeping and the sun isn't even warm yet. Or up in the sky for that matter. But its 6 am and time to get up....and get ready for highschool. Cold breakfast - check. Lunch, notebook and pen packed - check. Rainy skies and muddy roads - check.Warm clothes and homemade plastic bag gators on - check.
Despite the slimy weather the 40 min walk to the village school is an adventure. Because of our impromtu soccer game in our damp backyard while waiting for Micheal (an employee at our guesthouse, our trusty hiking guide, and a student taking us to school with him!) to pick us up, we are all energized and excited (and soaking wet - what a lovely way to start the day!) to experience school in another country. We pass endless fields of maize, a house or two, exchange a Dumela or two with the occassional villager and jump over numerous creeks crossing the sodden road.
When we get to the school we are greeted by the staff and then split into the different classrooms, that are shared amongst a few long buildings making a rectangle with a courtyard in the middle. The classess are split up by grade, but all ages, from 13 to early 30's, could be studying in any grade. I am put into the grade 10 classroom on my own and am immediately surrounded by the students. We spend some time exchanging the differences between Canada and Lesotho, and I as teach them French and English they teach me Sesotho. Eventually a teacher comes in and gives a short lecture on Agriculture, titled Soil Erosion, before leaving me alone with the students once more. So we once again spend another hour learning about each other's cultures. By midday we're all cold to the bone from our rainy trek and sitting in unheated classrooms for a few hours - but glowing from our super fun morning - and ready to head home and warm up.
The things that awed me about this morning was that the students are so self-governed in their education. If they want to learn anything at all they first have to get themselves to school, rain or shine, whether ten minute or two hour walk away. A uniform, black shoes and school supplies are neccessities, and most stuednts also bring a warm coat and hat for wearing all day in the unheated classrooms. When - and if, depedning on the weather - a teacher comes to teach a subject such as Greek, English, Home Economics, Sesotho, Math, Science or Agriculture, the students must take notes from the board and participate in group discussion in order to learn anything. When there is no teacher the students must learn on their own and with each others help....that is, if they're not distracted by ten Canadian nursing students visting their school, of all places :P
So the next time you complain about Canada's school system......don't. Because the schools are heated, the teachers teach and the buses run.
Next story from Lesotho? All-day hike amongst Lesotho's rocky peaks......
:D
Despite the slimy weather the 40 min walk to the village school is an adventure. Because of our impromtu soccer game in our damp backyard while waiting for Micheal (an employee at our guesthouse, our trusty hiking guide, and a student taking us to school with him!) to pick us up, we are all energized and excited (and soaking wet - what a lovely way to start the day!) to experience school in another country. We pass endless fields of maize, a house or two, exchange a Dumela or two with the occassional villager and jump over numerous creeks crossing the sodden road.
When we get to the school we are greeted by the staff and then split into the different classrooms, that are shared amongst a few long buildings making a rectangle with a courtyard in the middle. The classess are split up by grade, but all ages, from 13 to early 30's, could be studying in any grade. I am put into the grade 10 classroom on my own and am immediately surrounded by the students. We spend some time exchanging the differences between Canada and Lesotho, and I as teach them French and English they teach me Sesotho. Eventually a teacher comes in and gives a short lecture on Agriculture, titled Soil Erosion, before leaving me alone with the students once more. So we once again spend another hour learning about each other's cultures. By midday we're all cold to the bone from our rainy trek and sitting in unheated classrooms for a few hours - but glowing from our super fun morning - and ready to head home and warm up.
The things that awed me about this morning was that the students are so self-governed in their education. If they want to learn anything at all they first have to get themselves to school, rain or shine, whether ten minute or two hour walk away. A uniform, black shoes and school supplies are neccessities, and most stuednts also bring a warm coat and hat for wearing all day in the unheated classrooms. When - and if, depedning on the weather - a teacher comes to teach a subject such as Greek, English, Home Economics, Sesotho, Math, Science or Agriculture, the students must take notes from the board and participate in group discussion in order to learn anything. When there is no teacher the students must learn on their own and with each others help....that is, if they're not distracted by ten Canadian nursing students visting their school, of all places :P
So the next time you complain about Canada's school system......don't. Because the schools are heated, the teachers teach and the buses run.
Next story from Lesotho? All-day hike amongst Lesotho's rocky peaks......
:D
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