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!!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
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
Monday, May 9, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Roma: my new home
We have gotten to an internet cafe again sooner than we thought, so we can all get our facebook and e-mail fix in :)
Roma is the town in which we are living during our stay here. There are many houses and farms and fields within Roma, connected by dirt roads or footpaths and separated by many maay corn fields. Our home at the Trading Post is a B&B with many other lodgings, a shop and corn mill attached to it. It is very spread out by beautiful gardens, cottages and rondavels (traditional Basotho housing) for guest housing, and surrounded by a fence for safety. We can leave this fenced compound as a group during the day but stay inside at night while an armed guard patrols the yard. Our breakfast and dinners are lovely and preapred for us, and we shop at a grocery store in Maseru (the bigger city outside of Roma) for gorceries for lunches. In our house we have a kithchen, dining room and living room, plus several rooms and bathrooms that we share, but we are all very comfortable and looked after - totally spoiled actually, as I feel I eat and sleep better here do at my apartment in Kamloops :P
Our home is considered very upper class, and the other homes in Roma are a variety of lower class, brick and straw huts to the occassional middle or upper class larger, stone home, most of which are in Maseru and may have a care or two and a sattelite dish with it. Every more lower class home has a garden, a dog or two and some kind of livestock -cows, horse or donkeys, and maybe even pigs. Masreru is the opposite and consists of lots of traffic (constant taxi beeping, which means "Do you want a ride, I have room?"), people walking and lots of shops and tall office buildings, like any other city.
When I've been at the hospitals more and by the time we have internet access again, I'll write about my experiences there -we've only had one day at the local one in Roma.
Until next time, 'kaliboha' (thank you in Sesotho) for reading my blog and staying tuned in to my advetures here!!
Roma is the town in which we are living during our stay here. There are many houses and farms and fields within Roma, connected by dirt roads or footpaths and separated by many maay corn fields. Our home at the Trading Post is a B&B with many other lodgings, a shop and corn mill attached to it. It is very spread out by beautiful gardens, cottages and rondavels (traditional Basotho housing) for guest housing, and surrounded by a fence for safety. We can leave this fenced compound as a group during the day but stay inside at night while an armed guard patrols the yard. Our breakfast and dinners are lovely and preapred for us, and we shop at a grocery store in Maseru (the bigger city outside of Roma) for gorceries for lunches. In our house we have a kithchen, dining room and living room, plus several rooms and bathrooms that we share, but we are all very comfortable and looked after - totally spoiled actually, as I feel I eat and sleep better here do at my apartment in Kamloops :P
Our home is considered very upper class, and the other homes in Roma are a variety of lower class, brick and straw huts to the occassional middle or upper class larger, stone home, most of which are in Maseru and may have a care or two and a sattelite dish with it. Every more lower class home has a garden, a dog or two and some kind of livestock -cows, horse or donkeys, and maybe even pigs. Masreru is the opposite and consists of lots of traffic (constant taxi beeping, which means "Do you want a ride, I have room?"), people walking and lots of shops and tall office buildings, like any other city.
When I've been at the hospitals more and by the time we have internet access again, I'll write about my experiences there -we've only had one day at the local one in Roma.
Until next time, 'kaliboha' (thank you in Sesotho) for reading my blog and staying tuned in to my advetures here!!
Monday, May 2, 2011
A typical morning at the Trading Post in Roma, Lesotho....
This is our third day in Lesotho and we came into Maseru to do some errands use an internet cafe. There are so mnay things I could post about of my experiences so far in Lesotho, but that would take too long so I will pick one of my favorite things about Lesotho so far and share that with you.....
I love the mornings at our home in Lesotho, the Trading Post Lodge, in rural Roma. The sun comes up just after 7 and casts warm rays on the craggy mountains that sourround us, and paints the valley with a buttery glow as the early winter night gives way to a warmer morning. I can hear roosters crowing, birds calling, people singing, the odd cow moo and horse neigh, sitting right outside our room on the porch....... I love our home here and can't wait to see what more God has for us here, and to share the stories with you all!!
I would tell you more but my time on the internet is running out, so goodbye for another few days and I'll choose one of my many Lesotho adventures to write about again :D
I love the mornings at our home in Lesotho, the Trading Post Lodge, in rural Roma. The sun comes up just after 7 and casts warm rays on the craggy mountains that sourround us, and paints the valley with a buttery glow as the early winter night gives way to a warmer morning. I can hear roosters crowing, birds calling, people singing, the odd cow moo and horse neigh, sitting right outside our room on the porch....... I love our home here and can't wait to see what more God has for us here, and to share the stories with you all!!
I would tell you more but my time on the internet is running out, so goodbye for another few days and I'll choose one of my many Lesotho adventures to write about again :D
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