November thus far...

So in order to maximize my time in the most Princeton of ways, I'm typing away as we drive up in our four wheel drive, laptop in hand, heading back to Semonkong in an attempt to escape the certainty of a banal Maseru weekend. There’s four of us in the car, all wearing our sunglasses, basting American music, me with a lap-top and as we look out the window we see the sights of a poor African country. Funny how easily one can encapsulate yourself from the world.

Anyway, as I said we’re on our way back to Semonkong. I’m not sure I’ll partake in all the activities but it’s a nice escape from Maseru and a nice break from all the work that I have. Hopefully I can take a mental break. Speaking of work, the weeks and weeks that I have been spending here in Africa are finally accumulating in a massive HIV testing event this Friday. In actual fact, I’m extremely nervous how this thing is going to go. I’m juggling government requests, sponsorship funds and testing protocols all while trying to make this event attractive to young Basotho so that they will test for HIV. I’m still waiting to hear back for some donations and we’ll lets just say I cant wait till this thing is over. For example, yesterday at 4:30 I learned that the event t-shirts would be an extra 10000R which clearly wasn’t in the budget… so after some praying (Help me Je-bus), begging and speeding through the town, I cancelled my order, found a new place and things are back on track. All within 2 hours on a Friday evening, in a place where you are lucky if you can get anything done on a day so close to the weekend.

Last weekend was quite exciting. Let me start with Friday.. Friday was the date of my Key Hole Garden project at the Baylor Centre. Long story short, I had met with the WFP a couple of months ago and they lamented there wasn’t much I could do for the patients at Baylor who would be soon removed from WFP aid. WFP aid is a bit strange, in an attempt to get people off the programme, they start to wean them off at nine months. The requirement for food aid itself is that you have to be poor, unable to feed yourself, AND have a kid that has HIV. Only those people will get food packages, and after nine months, youre off the porrogramme even though you STILL are poor, hungry and have a kid that is sick. So the project was intended to choose some of the patient families at Baylor and teach them how to garden. A big project that World Vision and CRS (Catholic Relief Services) is trying to push here is this key hole garden thing. Basically the soil in Lesotho is crap. Its very hard to grow stuff here so you make these above ground things and put anything you can in them to make them more nutritiuous and fertile. Chicken bones, aloe leaves, fertilizer, ash, the list goes on in this gardening concoction. But basically its really cool and pretty. We had been meeting for a couple of weeks in order to organize the thing, get proper training, equipment, etc. Eventually we decided to just “pay someone on the street” to go out into the bush and find us all the stuff. So that’s what I did. Handed off like ten bucks here and there and got people from the community to gather up all the required ingredients. Thats what I call delegating.

The even itself was actually amazing. It was so cool to finally be apart of something here in Africa. I got down and dirty with about fiftteen Basotho in an attempt to learning how to make themselves more self sustainable. The thing that shocked me the most is that these Basotho were no spring chickens. We had 60 year old women lifting heavy rocks and shoveling manure. And everyone really came together, there was kind of an unspoken code between everyone to chip in and learn how to do this thing. We even handed out some forms at the end so I can assess the project and do some monitoring and evaluation on the project to see if it worked out. Like I said World vision and CRS are trying to push these things. They later told me that they were going to basically do the same sort of events that I as doing that day. Kind of cool to think: me implementing a project before these two big shots and doing it successfully. Let say I was very happy with myself. The proeject itself really didn’t run all that smoothly... It involved people running all over the town gathering emergency equipment but in the end we produced this beaufiful garden that one day will grow some delicious vegetables. The funny thing about the whole project is that the workers at Baylor all came together to put this thing together. At the end they were all like, well what are you going to give me for all my work? Surprized because I thought they were just doing this because it was in their job description, I bought them a couple of gifts and and took them out to lunch. So I guess you have to play the game in order to get stuff done here in lseotho

The day after, relieved that I had been finished this project, I had to head up north in order to host a quasi emergency volunteer meeting for my testing event. The whole drive up I was so nervous, having to work my fourth weekend in a row and just genereally being exhausted. But my worries were not all that founded. The meeting actually went really well.

I arrived at this centre where we decided to host the gathering and the centre actually was for mentally disabled kids. I parked my car at the camp grounds and as soon as I walked out, I heard screams of “Lekhooa!” “White person!”. And twenty kids run towards me like a swarm of bees. One kid takes a running leap and lands in my arms. He starts giggling and then everyone erupts in laughter, with me the white guy in the centre and a ring formed around me. I start lifting the kids up, all of them just excited by my presence. High fives were exchanged, with everyone wanting an exchange with me. And then hugs were determined to be the next cool thing to do. So after laughing with and hugging these kids I managed to escape for the meeting. I walked in, and about 60 sets of eyes set on me. I’m shaggily dressed, I’m introduced as Dr. Malcolm and I walk up and start dictating what I want from these people. I have no idea what I’m doing, I grab a boy and have him translate for me, but all in all, everyone starts to slowly get excited about the HIV testing event. I gathered the names and contact information and I pull aside everyone to explain each and everyone’s role for the event. I left feeling pretty proud to have gotten what I wanted actually. I snuck outside of the meeting, to have the kids from the centre sawrm me again and circle my car as I tried to leave. I guess sometimes there is a benefit to being different here in Africa. I was pretty relieved to be done with work that week and rushed down to Maseru in order to enjoy the rest of my weekend.

I went to an expat party that night. Nothing much to report on that one. I’ve become quite bored with this scene, seeing all the same people night in and night out, so instead I sneaked myself into the African half of the party (the parties seem to separate themselves in two, the expats and then the Basotho on the other side). I managed to meet a couple of really neat guys, trying to teach me how speak Sesotho and telling me more about there culture. I met with a guy who had been living with HIV for seven years. Its hard to think about “living” with the disease sometimes when you work at Baylor. We have the drugs, you take them. Its that simple sometimes to think, but there's so much more than that. I sat and listened to his story about the depression and daily tasks he had to complete just to make sure that he was both physically and mentally fit to live with the disease.


So apart from that last weekend I have been working furiously. With moments of complete frustration, to times where things seem to come together and just work out. For example, for this testing event I have ordered 500 testing kits. There is a massive shortage in the country. I need five hundred of these things. Not sure how that’s going to work a testing event with no testing taking place, but I’m hoping the country gets its act together and we can have some of the resources together. By the next three days.

The other big news of course from last week is the American election and what I will congratulate my princetonian friends with a job well done in electing the right man. So how was the election perceived here in Africa?

First lets just say everyone here is excited. The night before the election, the US Ambassador had a party at his house to “celebrate democracy”. I felt a bit of a guilt sneaking myself into the thing, being Canadian and all, but I do feel like I am owed some sort of participation in this election, one being a citizen of this global world and two having spent so much of my time with Americans and living in the US for so long. The party was interesting, with a clear siding of Obama at the place. There were literally a thousand people at this event, with all the big shots involved. The director of the hospital introduced me to the ambassador, who “thanked me for my service here in Lesotho”, which felt a bit strange, especially working amoung side the Baylor doctors here who “make BIPAI the best NGO here in Lesotho” according to the ambassador. Anyway, next she introduced me to the Minister of health. The woman, who was small in stature and quite happy to meet me noticed the pen in my ear, which I have been accustomed to sporting... always needing it on the road. “Look at thjis boy! A pen in his ear, always ready to help Lesotho!” And then she grabbed my wrist and took me into a big hug. So it was nice to have met some of these poele who seem to be generally happy to have so many Americans here to help out, although at times it feels like nothing much can be done. Anyway, back to the electrion. The party really didn’t have any results from back in the US, which is why I think a lot of people showed up , se we decided to leave early and get back home so we could connect to the internet and see some of the action live. Since we are about seven hours ahead of new york here in maseru, we couldn't really hear all that much so we decided to get to bed early and try to wake up early the next moring to hear the results. We woke up at six and had a big breakfast together, just in time to catch the end of obama’s acceptance speech. We arrived late to work that day, to a buzz at the clinic. Kathy the clinic director and my boss, was wearing her Obama 08 shirt. The administrators conducted the morning prayer and then translated the results to the waiting pateints. They all roared with excitetment. Kathy then jumps up and cries, “Yes we can!” and the whole of the hospital starts clapping and roaring. So even in Lesotho, doctors, patients, everyone, is exited for this change.

That day at work while emailing and finishing up some documents, I was online, talking to everyone back in America. Ted had been up since that moring in Thailand and had been celebrating with his boss. Princeton was jumping with excitement. And back home in Canada everyone was relieved. And now they have paved a road to Obama’s grandmother's house in Kenya and the day has been declared a national holday there. Although I really wished I could have been in the US for this day, it truly was an worldwide event.

So this has the been the last week so let me fill everyone in quickly on what I’ve been doing before hand. Last Sunday, in a feeling that I had not been seeing much of Lesotho, I headed up to Qilane falls, which is about an hour and a half drive from Maseru. The drive was absolutely ridiculous. Straight up a mountain, hairpin turns, it was definitely exciting and we were lucky for the car to have made it up there. But the trip was awesome, I went with three brits who were quite entertaining. The hike was long, four hours in lenght, with a dark grey cloud following us the entire time but we managed to evade it. On the way back we trailed though a river bed, so it was all very different in landscape. That day started the six days in a row of thunder and rainstorms here. I’ve never seen so much lightening before in my life. And just a word to the reader: J. R. R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein , RSA so Lesotho, with its mountains and storms and lightning is often accredited with the inspiration of Mordor. I’m living in Mordor!

Anyway, the Sunday before that I was able to partake in the Maseru hash house harriers. Which prior to going to the event had no idea what it was about. Turns out that its like a huge igternational movement. It involves mostly running aournd, finding the correct path and then drinking beer at the half way point. The crew was a huge mix of people, sixty year old expats to 12 year old Basotho. So it was really neat actually. The trail wasn’t too interesting but it was nice to get out and see a bit more of the hills of Lesotho. Plus I learned about this whole international HHH thingy… supposedly theyre all over the world. The hashers, as they are called, in Maseru were wearing shirts from Laos, Cambodia, Bahamas, Zambia, Sudan.. its crazy and fun and I'll definitely try to get back to it.

Teen club is going really well although Its been taking so much of my time. Two weekends ago we had a whole bunch of heatlh educators come in. I felt bad for the kids having to sit there for so many hours just listening to people talk about how to brush your teeth, but its definitely information that needs to be spread. We hope to do a Sexual and Reproductive Health day as well, because despite the fact that some of these kids are stunted fifteen year olds, they are already having sex. Mike at the Malawi Coe said hes going to try to push this as well, so hopeflully we can get some headway on that.

I’m going to leave this blog with my thoughts in working for an NGO, really having no experience and trying to land on my feet in dealing with such sensitive issues. A couple of weeks ago, I was starting to get worried about sponsorship for my testing event… So I called up a local NGO to see if they could help out. I rushed over there at 3pm a couple of Fridays ago and met with one of the directors. He was kind of a jerk, yelling on the phone with some local partners that I had been working with, not really giving me the time of day. So I took a big breath and tried to put on my most sophisticated, hot shot talk on. I don’t know what happened but I started listing out all this HIV information and all these demands came to mind and I actually didn’t sound like a twenty year old but a real NGO projessional. Next, I thought maybe he knew a friend of mine so I dropped her name somewhere in the conversation and then, I noticed he had a French accent and we conducted the rest of the meeting in Frecnh. So the meeting turned from him not being all the interested in my testing event, to being as cunning and maniupluative as I could with connections and skills and basically, bs, to get what I wanted. It felt pretty good at the end when I got a large dollar donation for my event and I drove off quite happy. The other examples of this definitely have to be the respect I get from being white in this country. When people see me walk in with nice shoes and a nice shirt and the fact that I’m representing BIPAI every one addresses me as Dr. Malcolm. I met this terrible person from Idaho at this meeting last week as well. Explanation below:

Letsema is an organization that is trying to link up large and small ngos with eachother so we can all collaborate information and basically serve Lesotho better, the target is orphans and vulnerable children, so HIV plays a big part there. Anyway the group is awesome because it connects information and allows us not to do double work. Anyway, at this meeting it was pretty cool because I got to represent Baylor, and we pretty much rule here. I got to field questions and actually give input to the whole thing. Anyway, back to the terrible person. He being white is totally taking advantage of it. He lives about an hour outside of the city and is helping deliver babies, despite only having a “business degree” and 21 years of age. He wants to go into medical school, so I have no idea why its so necessary that he deliver babies now, especially because he’ll get that chance in the future. Anyway, at the meeting I got mad at him basically because these Basotho women are only allowing him to help deliver their babies because he’s white and of course he’s not saying anything about not being a doctor. So I guess I just wanted to finish up with saying that coming to Lesotho I have gotten a lot of responsibility where it is not owed. I’m slowly learning how the aid world works in this country and doing my best to help out, but at the same time trying to remain as ethical as possible.

The future will see my testing event so please wish me luck, I need it. Power of positive thinking people. After that will be a big focus on the HIV camp and then some traveling. Hope all is weel with everyone, will try to update this as much as possible.

Sala Hantle (stay well)

STU