Snapshots of Lesotho: 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

primary school in Ramabanta, 2nd or 3rd grade class

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