Food Part II

More pictures of food that I've made/eaten

I cooked that bread!  In the pot right behind it!

Food from Lesotho Independence Day.  We have pork, beef, papa, and the vegetable matter is chakalaka (similar to curry sort of...)

Food from plate place in Thaba Tseka.  We have tripe, papa, and various vegetables

Don't look vegetarians! Sheep that we ate!!!

Dessert dubbed Double Hamonate Supreme.  Pudding, cake, cookies, custard, and sprinkles :)

Soya mince burgers.  Not bad....but definitely not burgers.  Then again, real ketchup makes everything taste better!

Chocolate chip cookies!

I made a cake!

November and Photo Catchup!

Well, November turned out to be a surprisingly busy month for me and my organization.  We had a week long work shop on marketing and created and business plan as well as a budget for the vegetable production project they are trying to get off the ground.  I think it was useful for them, but only time will tell if they actually use any of the information...
I've also been involved with the building of several keyhole gardens, cooking demonstrations to the nursing mothers of nearby communities for cheap and healthy alternatives to traditional Basotho food, and helping the primary school prepare for exams (which took place in the last two weeks.)
The weekends have also been very busy for me; my birthday, Cherry Fest in Ficksburg, South Africa, and Thanksgiving. This entire upcoming week, I’ll be back in my training village in Berea for a week long training called Phase III, where we’ll get training on topics specific to what we’ve found we need for our organizations.  I’m definitely excited to see everyone again as well as see my host family!

Neighborhood kids!

LOOK AT THE BABY!

View of my part of the village from the top of the hill.  Mine's the one with the metal roof!

More of the village from the same hill

Herd boys looking like only herd boys can...

Building a seed bed!

Me helping out! ....I wasn't actually of much use

Building a keyhole garden

Local ECCD and the flag I painted for them

Tractors and farmers in our front yard.  They're called the "soldiers of Lesotho".  Also random Ntate with a horse.

Pretty sunset.  This is the top of the mountain that my village sits on.

Basotho Fashion 101

Now, Maseru and the other big towns will have more of an “American” type of dress available- jeans, sweaters, Toms, Converse, big purses, etc.  However, in the rural villages, there are a few staple traditional garments.

Men

1.       Blanket- Men wear it around the shoulders like a cape, fastened with a giant safety pin.  It’s usually clasped over a shoulder so that one hand is free to work or hold a malamu.

2.       Malamu- large stick used for walking or beating herd animals

3.       Gum boots- rain boots that are extremely useful during the rainy and snowy seasons.

4.       Herd Boy Hat- so named by us volunteers, but it’s basically a ski mask.  You see some dude walking by wearing one and a blanket and you’d be surprised how scary it looks.

Women

1.       Blanket- younger girls and bo-‘m’e (women) wear them pinned like a skirt around the waist (to increase fertility by warming your womb) but grandmothers also wear them around the shoulders.

2.       Headscarf- Never leave home without it or a sun hat.  Basotho are real big on head coverings.  And the women always seem to find the most awesome ways of tying them.

3.       Seshoeshoe- Traditional style and print of formal/celebratory dress.  I’m wearing one in my profile picture on facebook, but the style is not traditional.  They tend to have HUGE puffy sleeves.

Children

They mostly wear what the adults of their respective genders wear, although many of them wear clothing I would expect to see kids in America wear as well.  All children who attend school are required to buy and wear uniforms.

Agriculture?

Since it is now spring time in Lesotho, the entire village has been working plowing fields for maize, planting home gardens, and generally being very busy.  On our compound, we now have two seed beds, a keyhole garden, a flower patch, and there will soon be a trench garden.  With any luck, around December or January we’ll have tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, squash, spinach, radishes, carrots, beets, and lettuce!  It was definitely not east building all of these though; we had to bring wheelbarrows of soil, manure, mulch and stone to the compound from around the village.  And by we I mean that we cooked food for a bunch of kids and fed them in exchange for their manual labor… I did, however, by myself, haul 60 liters of water from the tap in one day to get the compost heap in the keyhole started.

The Ministry of Agriculture also gave a week long workshop about potato production which would have probably been informative for me personally if it’d been in English.  However, I spent most of the time helping one of the women cook food for those at the workshop.  This also meant that I got to eat chicken for four days in a row which was awesome!

Speaking of eating meat,  I was present at a sheep slaughtering a few weekends ago.  Another Thaba Tseka volunteer, Mike Kerr, had his mother visiting from the States and his host family threw a party for her which of course included a slaughter!  Mike actually did the deed himself and with the help of a few other guys, skinned and butchered it as well.  In short, it has been a very good month for me as far as meat consumption goes :)

One of the local ECCD (early childhood care and development) schools is literally right next to my compound.  The kids come over and hang out with me in my house maybe once a week or so.  We play with Jenga blocks because we’re really cool like that…

50th Anniversary/ Pony Camp

This year marks the 50^th anniversary since Peace Corps was established so there was a big celebration last week in Morija, a place near Maseru and also where the king lives!  It was an All Vol which means all the volunteers in country were invited to come.  We stayed for a few nights at the Mazenod Conference Center and generally just hung out and got to meet everyone.  We also learned about the different committees within Peace Corps that we can serve on as volunteers if we happen to have the time.

Part of the festivities involved the CHED 11’s swearing in again, which was really special since the ambassador, the king, several other dignitaries, Peace Corps staff, and all the other volunteers were there to see it.  Most volunteers swear in with just their villages and teachers, so this was particularly awesome.  ALSO, the king and the ambassador both said they liked my seshoeshoe!

There was of course tons of food after the event including some really amazing desserts.  I also took advantage of the fact that I was in Maseru (a city with an actual supermarket) and bought tuna, hummus, yogurt, cheese, and several other things I often have trouble finding in Thaba Tseka.

From there, two other CHED 11’s, Tommy and Carol, myself, and another volunteer, Joey, went to Joey’s place in Mafeteng, another district, to learn to ride horses! Joey worked a lot with horses back in the states and she trained some of the volunteers from the last group to ride as well.  The three of us will probably need to ride at some point for our work because we often have to go way out in the mountains where it’s difficult for even four wheel drive to get to.

Pony camp was definitely a lot of fun, even though I was unfortunately sore afterwards L One of the big difficulties with riding here is that the horses here are not so much trained but instead they respond occasionally to being beaten with a stick.  I unfortunately did not get the opportunity to ride on a donkey, but it will happen at some point in the next two years!

Me and my friend Lyndsey at the 50th

I shook the king's hand!