Thus far...

So I will try my best to fill in what has happened so far in the past four weeks since I have been here. Yes four weeks! The time has flown by.

I arrived in Lesotho after a long voyage. Vancouver to Newark, New York to Johannesburg via Senegal and then Johannesburg to Maseru. I was glad to land and the brief night that I spent in Johannesburg I think is enough for the year. The airport was the sketchiest place I’ve been. The administration was supposed to pick me up at the airport but because my flight was a day later than all the new doctors arriving from Houston, I was forced to stay a night and fly to Lesotho the next morning. I had just stepped off from the airplane and I could tell that I stuck out, 22, blond and clearly lost. The thing that Princeton in Africa tells you not to do, is to take unregistered taxis from the airport, especially in Johannesburg. So with this in mind, I lugged all my stuff back and forth looking for something that was legitimate. All the while, there were literally hundreds of guys sensing how lost I was and wanting my business. So after trying for about an hour… I thought what the hell, and I spoke to a guy that came up and approached me. He grabbed my bags and headed off… and I quickly followed, imagining the worst, perhaps he stealing all my stuff and being left in RSA penniless. Anyway, he carted my things for about 2 minutes and then demanded money. I gave him 20R (which is around 3$) which was a lot for doing nothing. He freaked out and demanded more. He started flashing 20 US dollar bills, claiming that was what most people gave him. And I was like… there is no way anyone in their right mind would give you 20 dollars for what you did. So I basically told him off and ran inside, hiding beside a man that I thought was a police officer.

Of course, this man was another peddler and started demanding money too. I told him I’d give him some if he let me use his phone, so I quickly called up the hotel to come whisk me away. Even as the shuttle arrived, 3 guys jumped on my bags to pick them up and try to get some sort of a tip. And I guess I was in a particularly sassy mood because I slammed the door in their faces and told the driver to step on it.

I arrived at the hotel and the first thing I wanted to do was to email my mommy and let her know that I was okay and that I managed to survive the airport. But the moment that I turned on my computer, it picked up a virus. And to this day, one month later, the computer still won’t work and I am trying to recover all my files from school, pictures and music (trust me there’s a lot of stuff that one accumulates over 4 years). So after the virus and the people demanding money, I was kind of scared. I barricaded the door to my hotel room with towels (I don’t know how that is supposed to work) and my bags and promptly tried to sleep. This was my first introduction to Africa and I was scared.

To make a long story short, I arrived in Maseru without any major problems. I was greeted by the clinic’s driver, Limpho*

*Sesotho lesson one: When L is followed by an I or a U it is pronounced like a D. I have no idea why this is the case, because supposedly the Basotho people adopted the alphabet from the French missionaries who came to convert them all in the 19^th century, so something must have been lost in translation. Sesotho lesson two: Lesotho is the country, Sesotho is their language. Basotho is the people, Masotho is the singular (in case you wanted to know).

who was happy to find me in once piece. From the moment I landed in Lesotho I loved it. The landscape is something of a puzzle, partly rugged but also very dry and windy. It looks like Arizona, with slightly more jungle trees and more mountainous as you head in. Anyway, I arrived at Moshoeshoe International Airport and was happy to see such a beautiful place that I would be spending the next year. Moshoeshoe International is some what of a joke. Its tiny and is about the size of 5 houses stacked beside each other. The common joke is that if you miss someone at the airport, you claim: “You must have been at the other gate”. There is only one gate. You cant miss anyone there. If you were on one end, you could spot a mouse on the other side.

Anyway, the airport wasn’t too impressive but Lesotho definitely has been thus far. On the first day I got to the Baylor College of Medicine – Bristol Myers-Squibb Pediatric Aids Clinic Centre of Excellence (that’s the title… which I will just call the clinic for now) and was swept up in this thing called “Teen Club” which is something that I work with now and help organize. Basically, Teen Club is this program that brings in kids for a day once a month and discusses issues surrounding HIV. All the members of teen club are HIV positive and in a sense, the club is meant for a place where kids can be kids, where they can learn to deal with HIV and where they can get some sort of support. That day the clinic was graced by the King and the Queen of Lesotho, so there was much excitement. I arrived after that, just in time for food and the closing exercises. After a brief meeting with the director of the clinic and meeting a few of the staff, I jumped in and got to see some of the action.

The kids I must say were absolutely amazing. They were so much fun and supportive each other and everyone was laughing so much. At the end of the day, Kathy, one of the directors of the clinic, got up and stood in the middle of the exercise, which was a large circle of children. She had organized an essay contest for the kids and gave out prizes. The essay was “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up”. You see, for these kids, HIV is not a death sentence by any means. As long as children take their medication, everyday of their lives, they will continue to survive and grow old just like everyone else. Kathy claimed: “You are the future of Lesotho” and reminded the kids, that despite their positive status, that life was not over.

The first week of work flew by, as it was mostly introductions to the staff and learning about the HIV pandemic in Lesotho. One thing I definitely remember from the week was my driving adventures. I bought a car from the past fellow and have had hours worth of trouble. The very first day I had it I got lost three times… the first was a wrong turn into a herd of children going to school… I definitely felt like that white guy as the Basotho children stared me down. The second time I ended up on a dirt road and then in a ditch. I jumped out of the car in an attempt to push it out, but cars are a lot heavier than I expected. A group of Basotho men came to my rescue, I was a bit scared, not knowing what they wanted… but they heaved the car out and I was on my way. I can definitely say I had nothing to fear. The Basotho people are actually wonderful. Overly friendly, always saying hello, striking up conversations, and always laughing. Its been really nice being in such a friendly place. Anyway, back to the car. I got lost again but I made it to work okay and I have slowly started to learn my way around Maseru. The car is a manual, and I have had my series of problems but all seems well. The traffic is a bit insane, with people only signaling with horns and taxi drivers trying to grab as many passengers as possible. A week ago there was a traffic jam just outside the clinic, and it was pure madness. People ride on the backs of trucks here and they were all screaming at each other, like the cars were merely podiums for them to scream from and the cars just playing minor parts in the traffic. A cow had supposedly been hit and it took some careful Indiana Jones driving to get out of there. And a few days ago, there was a stalled car. So if you can imagine, a highway of four lanes. Two going north and two going south. But instead the drivers didn’t like that one of the lanes were being taken up, so all of a sudden, two lanes north became four lanes north and the south ones were pushed off the road into one dirt one. Crazy but I guess it worked. So, I am slowly learning the ways of the road in Lesotho, lets just hope for no accidents.

Another thing that I remember during the first week was how unsettled I felt. It is not that Lesotho is all that dangerous, although as an expat, you must have a guard at your house. And the house that I am currently staying at has a gate and a series of barb-wired fences to keep people out. Its that I am used to being so safe. For people reading from Princeton or from West Van, I can tell you, that Maseru feels nothing like that. Coming from places where no crime ever happens and you can walk down the street at 2am with no worry at all, it’s a bit of change when everything must be locked, and you cannot have your windows down in the car most of the time.

To explain a bit about the clinic: it’s a wonderful place and the doctors there do amazing things. The docs are a mixed bag of personalities, all American, and are all so set on helping out the terrible HIV problem. Its so uplifting to be able to work with them. The clinic itself is brand new and beautiful and is something of a change of scenery compared to the small shacks that surround it. I have had the opportunity to travel a bit outside of the capital, to the south in Mafetang. And I can tell you that this clinic is a palace compared to the other ones, which are just old, dirty and unusable by North American standards.

The final thing that I remember from my first impressions was the disparity of wealth in Lesotho. I live in this massive home with guards, a housekeeper and a gardener, but my neighbour's house is a single room made with a tin roof and garbage everywhere. The country is definitely very pooor, with a clear definition between the middle (with the expats making up most of the upper class) and poor classes. Basically everyone lives in these tiny rooms and its cold here. Its winter right now and Lesotho is very high up in the mountains, so the image you have of a hot Africa is not at all what I'm experiencing and the people here are freezing.

After the first week I made a trip up to Semonkong, which is up in the high mountains of central Lesotho. It was so beautiful, a high plateau with beautiful trees and really rugged. And there were these cherry trees spotted along the way.. very idyllic. I have pictures to put up once my computer is back in action. The journey there was ridiculous.. the roads are non-existent and we had to get a pro driver to navigate the sharp turns. We passed nomadic Basotho men covered only in wool blankets. We visited an orphanage headed by the nicest people in the world. This family had moved all the way from the Netherlands with their three kids to help out. There are definitely people out here doing good things and working really hard.

Anyway, the point of the trip was to do this thing called abseiling, which is a fancy word for rappelling. We went to this huge canyon with this beautiful waterfall and we scaled down it for 200m. It is the largest abseil in the world and so pretty… probably the most obscure and foreign place I have been but well worth the drive.

So that was the first week. The last ones have been pretty tough. The third week was headed off by a fire at my house. Its dry here and windy so when a man walked by my house and flicked a cigarette onto the lawn, it burst into flames. It swept up the hill and caught the trees in my yard on fire, the fence and the lawn. I had just arrived from the grocery store and I noticed a bit of smoke. When I peered over the fence, it erupted and I ran away panicking. I had never been in a fire before! It was a fire ball two stories high when it hit the fence. Because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing I started calling everyone I knew, and by the time I knew it, half of the people at work, the neighbors, security guards and little boys in the neighborhood were helping me put it out. We used hoses, buckets, dirt... just about everything. It was quite the scene and the fire department didn’t do anything. But all is fine now.

So after dealing with that, I was trying to relax and then the dog escaped (through the non-existent fence). I had five search parties looking for this thing, finally found it, only to escape 4 more times through the many repairs we did on the fence. On the fifth time it bit my friend who was helping me so I said, that’s enough and now the dog is in a kennel. And during the week of the dog escaping, I was deathly ill. So after the fire, the dog, the sickness and missing home, it was quite the rough time. But now everything is fine and I think I have caught you up to speed.

This past week was spent with the second Teen Club (we made masks to reflect how people view HIV) and then played games (this is the fun stuff!) and meeting with people for the testing events that I am organizing for November.

Anyway, I leave this first blog (I know, very long) with a few thoughts about what I’m doing here in Africa and what the situation is. Basically my job is divided amongst community awareness, testing events and what I will call fun stuff. I am organizing camper recruitment for a camp for HIV positive kids as well as the activities for Teen Club; that’s the fun stuff. The second part is the testing events, where I basically work with partner organizations and community members such as schools to organize testing events to get kids tested for HIV. This can range anything from “carnivals” which I’m trying at the moment, to soccer tournaments. The final section is linking the hospital to other NGOs. I am meeting with the UN WFP to implement a program that will make the transition from receiving aid to receiving nothing easier. I am working with the Peace Corps to link their volunteers up to our doctors and working with a group called ALAFA, which is related to the textile unions of Lesotho, so as to help test and refer the children of union members to the hospital. I am not entirely sure how that is done. But I’m trying.

On a side note... HIV in Lesotho is absolutely terrible. HIV is a treatable disease...in fact on Anti retroviral drugs someone with HIV can live a normal life with a normal life span. Yet hundreds of children and people die every day and people just don’t take their medication because of the stigma around it. Often people just don’t want to know if they are positive, even though we can treat them and allow them to live their lives. On the first day, the director was driving me back to my home from work and she points out the window. "See that house over there?". And it was literally 50 times bigger than anything in Lesotho and would rival anything in the US. "The owner of the place is the owner of the largest funeral home in the country. The last couple of years have been very profitable". So literally, people are dying from HIV all the time all the while there is this clinic that can help all of them.

That is all for now. I'll be better in the future!