Joining Them

Kadi and I went back to the SOS camp on Monday. Kadi had to head back early to conduct interviews for a documentary she’s making, but I ended up spending the night at the high school and working with them the following day.

sign to SOS village near the clinic

we were dropped off at the work site on Monday around 10am
palesa, nalali (pronounced naw-lady), and me

working attire

leveling out the road

making it wider

itumeleng and local kid

my first time pickaxing, one of the guys helped show me proper axing form

determined to prove myself

boys piling on the pick up truck to get a ride to lunch instead of walking (school was about a fifteen minutes walk away)

pretty mountains

we headed back at 1pm for lunch and then just relaxed around the campsite for the rest of the afternoon. kadi and i ended up getting everyone in a big circle, had them say their name and age, and then gave them our back stories, so they knew who we were and why we were there. it helped break the ice between us.

picture taken from one of the classroom windows

the side of the school reads "love safely"

i snuck a picture of the boys dancing behind the school

when it became dark the cold began to set in. all the girls headed back to the classroom, huddled around the heater, and began to catch up on the latest gossip. they asked me what life in america was like from weddings to dating to weekend activities to school to funerals. the funeral question caught me the most off guard. i suppose that they happen so frequently here that they consider them a big part of every day life. they also asked me about obama and what i thought of him. i said that i supported him. when i asked them why they looked so surprised, they told me that they assumed i would have preferred bush since i was white.
then i began asking them about life here and i had major "american sleepover" deja vu as we talked about boys and who was dating who. we also talked about our hopes for our futures. i asked them to teach me some sesotho and they attempted to teach me basic words.
when i told them that i knew a fair amount of spanish, they asked me to teach them some. so, we alternated learning words in english, sesotho, and spanish.
we giggled, gossiped, and huddled close for warmth.

our conversations were lit by candle light

dinner being served in one of the classrooms

next morning, sun coming up behind the mountains

sun slowly reaching across the mountain sides

latrine

another school nearby

local farmers plowing

breakfast

breakfast was six slices of bread, margarine, and tea

another mountain shot

a woman washing clothes in the river

hut on the horizon

at the work site the next day

a man's head peeping out of the top of the roundaval as he was building up the walls

lesotho laundromat

new friends.


by the time i left, i had three more blisters to add to my collection from the pickaxing and shoveling, sore muscles, and about eighty new friends.