Village Life in Lesotho

As I venture on this topic, I'm keenly aware there are experts in Lesotho - Kaybee, Lineo, Lipalesa, and Sebitsa - my nieces and nephew, who know far more than I ever will and who may be reading my blog.  So, let's rephrase: these are the observations of someone who grew up in a suburb of Boston on the beauty of Lesotho's rural life.

We have gotten into the habit of dividing the world into developed and developing nations, implying that becoming developed is the goal of developing nations.  But this was not my impression after living in Lesotho, my second home, for nine years.

My wife, Qenehelo, grew up in the small village of Tsoe'ng.  As a young girl, she fetched water by walking a fair distance downhill to a spring, filling a large bucket with water, and carrying it back on her head.  During dry seasons she had to get to the spring before dawn because the spring dried up early.   She fetched cow dung from the fields and brush from the mountain for cooking.  So meals were cooked outdoors and water had to be used economically.

Most of the dwellings were mud huts (rondavels) with thatched roofs.    Qenehelo's family had a round house for cooking and a rectangular house for sleeping. There was no electricity.  At the top of a hill was a large building (mud walls and corrugated iron roof) which served as a school room during the week, a church on Sunday mornings, and a concert hall on Sunday afternoons.

Outside the houses chickens clucked about and in the kraals cows, sheep, and pigs mulled around.

Because the houses were small, people left their doors open all day and visiting neighbors was the main way of spending the day.   The contrast with my current neighborhood, where we speak pleasantries across the street and close our doors is striking.  Qenehelo's mother, 'Matiisetso, one of the kindest, most generous people I have known, was a wonderful example of neighborliness.   When she was cooking, village people might loiter about the door.  'Matiisetso would always bring them a plate of food.  Once a neighbor came saying she has no money for her daughter's school uniform; 'Matiiesetso without hesitation went to her teapot where she saved money for sugar, tea, and the like, and handed all her money to her neighbor.

At risk of over romanticizing, the village seemed like a family of two hundred people.  At weddings of village girls, everybody joined in the procession to share the joy; at funerals the whole village joined a procession to the church and then to the burial site to honor the person's life and to see he or she was buried with dignity.   After the funeral, everybody went to the home of the deceased, first to wash their hands (removing death), and then to join in a feast.

Even the names by which others are addressed reflect the sense of family: a woman is called "'Mme" (mother), a man is called "Ntate" (father), a girl is addressed as "ausi" (sister) and a boy a "abuti" (brother).   These names are for everybody, not just members of one's family.

I don't want to imply that there wasn't both good and evil in Lesotho.   There was.   But the societal norms favored sharing, neighborliness, and a sense of community.  The heart and soul of life in Lesotho lay in the villages, where most people live, where neighbors look after neighbors. 

Getting out of the Easy Chair

I know that lectures on the need for exercise are tedious and annoying, so you won't get any from me.   But have you seen the reports on the 102 year old man who still goes to the gym working on weights and the rowing machine?  Three cheers for him.   He may not be typical, but he's sure great..

 

I'm nowhere near his age bracket but I still go to the gym everyday.   When I wake up in the morning I sure don't say to myself "I can't wait to get to the gym!"  It would be much easier to loll in bed sipping coffee and reading the paper.  I go because it's time to go: I do it every day.  I keep count of the number of consecutive days I've gone as a way of motivating me.   (I'm now at 72 days , but  once made it to 259.)  Above is a picture of me on my way to the daily wortkout.   And hey the other day a woman at the gym asked me "Are you 70 yet?"   Oh yeah!   Never mind that I left 70 behind years ago.  It made me feel it was worthwhile.

There are plenty of other ways to get out of that chair.   From my teens on, I loved to go mountain hiking, an activity I had to give up a couple of years ago because of my stiff knees.

 

 

Here I am with my daughter Palesa in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park.



And here are wife Qenehelo, friend Jeff, and Palesa about to set off on a 5 km. race.

 

 

And here I was in the Colorado Rockies on home leave from the Peace Corps.   So my thought is, go hiking or running if you enjoy it or go to the gym to get yourself into shape, if you are so inclined.

My Friend, the Queen





My Friend the Queen:

I first met the Queen of Lesotho when I was teaching English at Moshoeshoe II High School in Matsieng, the royal village.  Everything about her showed she was a woman of the people: she got down on her hands and knees with the gardeners to weed the flowers; she invited all the village children to the birthday parties of Mohato, her son, and Seeiso, her daughter.   (Mohato is now in his forties  and is King Letsie III, but I remember attending his 12^th birthday party.)  The Queen was also famous for dancing with the village women.     There was nothing pretentious at all about her.   No wonder she was universally loved as a symbol of all that was good about the Basotho people.

When I returned to Lesotho later as a Foreign Service officer, the ambassador decided she should go to the United States under our international visitor program.   When the two of us went to the palace to invite her and before we could say anything, she smiled broadly and said “I accept!”

The picture above shows us in Matsieng in front of the king’s village house.  I had gone thereto discuss her U.S. program focused on meeting groups that promote women’s issues.   As we were talking, she blurted out, “Oh, Ntate Bill, I’m losing my hair!”   “Well so am I,” I replied.   “But you’re a man.”  Can you imagine any other queen in the world making such an unpretentious comment?

Her visit was covered by the Voice of America and when she returned she invited Qenehelo and me as well as several women friends to the palace for dinner where she excitedly recounted her adventures in the US.   A true woman of the people.

The Unfamous Meet the Famous

Like most people, I'm not famous. I can walk down the street and nobody, except for an occasional friend, recognizes me: no hands to shake, autographs to sign. In the Foreign Service, however, we sometimes get to meet the truly well known; they're visiting our country and we in the embassy orient them, set up appointments, provide transportation, and so forth. It's a brush with fame without the inconvenience of fame. Here are some that I've met.







In 1988, around Christmas time I was de facto chief of mission in Gabon: the ambassador was on vacation deep in the bush, and the Deputy Chief was on home leave. One day I received a call from the Foreign Ministry asking what were my plans for the Jackson visit. What Jackson visit? It turned out that Jesse, unannounced, would be arriving in three hours. I called all the embassy staffers who were around and we quickly arranged a welcoming party in coordination with our Gabonese hosts. I managed to contact the ambasador who asked me to set up ma reception while he hurried back. Jackson turned out to be most gracious, patient, and knowledgeable. In the picture above, I'm posing with Jesse at the ambassador's residence.



In 1982, when I was Cultural Affairs Officer in Zambia, then Vice President George H. W. Bush visited the country. One of his events was a reception and talk at the American Cultural Center. I asked Jonathan, our staff photographer, to be sure to take a picture of me shaking hands with the Vice President. I greeted Bush as he came in, but Jonathan was looking in another direction. I again shook Bush's hand at the reception, but, alas Jonathan had been distracted. However, I was in charge of Barbara Bush's program and here we are at one of her events. I'm at the right, confirming that indeed my hair was receding.

And who is this gentleman that I'm greeting effusively? It's General Kekhanya, head of the army of Lesotho and leader of the coup that elevated my friend the king as head of state. I talked about this on my post about the king and I.

Finally in Gabon, where our American Cultural Center library was named after Martin Luther King, I welcomed Coretta Scott King where she donated a collection of books on her husband. I'm not in the picture, because I took it! Some fond memories of my transitory brush with fame without any of the inconveniences of actually being famous.

Gospel Music in Gabon

One  of the really good activities of the US government is "Arts America," a program sponsored by what was then the US Information  Agency.  American musical groups, one of the most popular of which were gospel singers, were sent overseas as a way of sharing our culture.

 

While I was in Gabon, I learned via cable that a group called the Stars of Faith would be arriving in a month, giving me four weeks to turn a hitherto unknown ensemble into national celebrities.  I did this via TV (I had a sample tape) and radio interviews.  I persuaded our ambassador, Warren Clark, to propose to President Bongo a concert in the presidential palace to which ministers and other dignitaries would be invited.   When the idea was accepted, I knew we had a first.

 

On the evening of the event we were all gathered, Ambassador Clark,embassy officers, ministers, generals and the like with the president's daughter acting as hostess.  The Stars of Faith came on stage: four women singers and a male pianist.  But when they started to sing, it became obvious something was wrong with the pianist.  Whereas he had played well during rehearsal, he was now banging out irrelevant and discordant chords.  While we wondered what was going on, he fell off the piano stool and crawled on all fours off stage.

 

The Stars of Faith quickly switched to a Capella songs.   Then, towards the end of the concert, the pianist reappeared on stage dragging a chair and resumed "playing."  As the group stood to bow, pianist and singers, the pianist fell off the stage to "oohs and ahs."   It turned out he was full of drugs and alcohol and there we were, the ambassador and staff, to absorb the embarrassment..

 

The Gabonese carried on with an after-concert reception, complete with Dom Perignon, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, ministers and generals shaking hands with us.   In the picture above with me smiling and bowing obsequiously, I'm shaking hands with the president's daughter (the lead singer is on the right) with Ambassador Clark in the background and Deputy Chief of Mission Ken Scott on the left.  

 

In the aftermath, I sent cables to all the posts on the singers' schedule describing what had happened, the pianist was sent back to Paris, and the gospel group, all professionals, completed a very successful stay in Gabon, relying solely on their a Capella repertoire. 

 

We were fortunate to have had such gracious Gabonese hosts.

 

 

 

 

"War Tales" from Zambia

A conventional view of life in the Foreign Service is that of officers living in fancy houses, and hobnobbing with the local elite while wearing pin striped suits. This is true of our activity about 90% of the time, but it’s the other 10% that’s really exciting. Here are a couple of scary events that happened shortly after my arrival. In 1980, two months into my tour in Zambia, while I was officially a Junior Officer Trainee, my boss decided a trip into the hinterlands of western Zambia was just what I needed to orient myself to the country. So I set off in an embassy jeep with Dave, the newly arrived consular officer, and Goodwin, one of our longest serving and most trusted Foreign Service Nationals, the title we gave to our local staff. All went well, calling on local officials and giving talks in schools to the effect that Ronald Reagan, our newly elected president, was appointing moderates so there was no need to worry. As we travelled farther and farther into the bush we appreciated the vast diversity, actually fragmentation, of a nation with some 80 spoken languages. Near the Angolan border, far, far from any central authority, we stopped at a folksy tavern, bought soft drinks and ate lunch. Locals were lounging on the porch with their beers. Dave thought that would make a great picture, something to remember our trip by. So he pulled out his camera and snapped the shutter. Immediately we were surrounded by angry men, one of whom opened the door to our jeep and climbed into the backseat with Dave, demanding that he turn over his camera, which Dave refused to do. I was in the driver’s seat and the guy behind said “I have a gun and I’ll shoot you if you try to drive off.” Apparently they thought we were South African spies intent on destabilizing Zambia. Help! How could we get out of this jam with our lives? Goodwin was calmly explaining we were from the US Embassy and Dave had the idea of showing our travel orders and his diplomatic passport. Our captors grudgingly agreed we weren’t South Africans and let us proceed, Dave still in possession of his camera. It was quite a while before my nerves settled down. Back in Lusaka, the capital, I was installed in a nice house whose walls were largely glass. I had been in the house a few weeks when on a Tuesday night the alarm went off, indicating an attempted break in. The sound scared off the intruder but made me feel rather vulnerable. In response the embassy added a second guard. Two days later, I was awakened by the crash of breaking glass. Two guys with guns who fortunately ran away. The guards had prudently hightailed it over the back fence and my boss said over our radio I could spend the rest of the night at his house. The next morning I went to the ambassador, a generally intimidating man, pounded my fist on his desk and said, no matter what, I wasn’t spending another night in that house. It was located on the path to the city’s shanty town, crime-ridden home to thousands of working poor. So I was installed in what I later discovered was a CIA safe house, where the male house cleaner in residence regularly pilfered my food, not the best , but a big improvement over glass houses and break-ins. Just two examples of the 10% of our time. In the Foreign Service we call these “war stories,” tales we love to swap when we get together.

Islands in the Sun: My Adventures in Sao Tome

Islands in the Sun:  My Adventures in Sao Tome

My third Foreign Service posting was Libreville, Gabon, on the west coast of Africa and right on the equator, a welcoming environment for a host of tropical diseases from malaria on down.  I was also accredited to Sao Tome and Principe, two small equatorial islands about 300 miles off the coast of Gabon.   Sao Tome was a former Portuguese colony and cocoa plantation with the indigenous people doing all the work.

I flew out there four times a year (on a rickety airplane with no seatbelts run by Equatorial Air) for two or three days.  I’d get interviewed on the national radio, speaking French (with a Portuguese voice over), call on the editor of the newspaper and organize a reception at the island’s one hotel.  Fairly routine stuff, except for the scary plane ride.

Once when the US Navy show band was visiting Gabon accompanying a US military official for talks on cooperation, the band decided to go to Sao Tome and give a concert.  We arrived at 3 P.m. and my job was to locate a venue and publicize a totally unannounced concert in four hours.  In the distance I heard an ompah sound and located the Sao Tome military band, dented instruments and, all in a stadium.  There was the venue.   Then I went to the radio station to publicize the event.  My hope was that people would hear the sounds of the band and come out of curiosity.   We got there, started playing and soon the stadium was full.   I was the MC, speaking in French with a Portuguese interpreter.  The whole event was a roaring success.

Another visit, however, was far from routine.   The US Ambassador to the UN at the time, Vernon Walters, was visiting Libreville for Gabon’s independence anniversary and indicated he wanted to visit Sao Tome as well.  The word was that he collected countries he’d been to and Sao Tome would be an addition to his collection.  I was asked to accompany him.

The day before we were to go, there was an “invasion” of the islands.  The “invasion” consisted of six guys in a row boat who were promptly detained.   Still even though Sao Tome was on high alert we decided to go ahead with the visit.  When we landed at the Sao Tome airport, I noticed the landing strip was surrounded by Angolan soldiers, who provided military support to the islands.

The president of Sao Tome had retreated to a hideaway in the hills, as a precaution.  Ambassador Walters and I set off.  When we arrived, we found more Angolan soldiers, presumably protecting the president, following the “invasion.”  My job was to photograph the ambassador and the president and step outside while the two talked.   I got my picture and moved out to sit down when I was promptly surrounded by the Angolan soldiers all pointing their rifles at me.   I couldn’t speak Portuguese to explain that I was with the president’s visitor.  The thirty or forty minutes I sat out there looking down the barrels of the guns were frightening.   If I tried to get up and walk around, they stiffened and motioned with their guns that I should stay put.   “Hey, I’m not a threat,” I wished I could have said.  Eventually Walters emerged and I breathed a sigh of relief as we boarded the ambassador’s car and headed back to the airport.

Libreville, Gabon, with all its tropical diseases, had suddenly become a welcome haven of safety.

 

My Friend the King and I

After Zambia my second posting in the Foreign Service was to Lesotho where I was Public Affairs Officer and Director of the American Cultural Center.  Shortly after I arrived the ambassador hosted his annual Fourth of July reception where the King was an invited guest.  At the end, when I went to shake hands with His Majesty, the king whispered in my ear: “Bill let’s not let protocol interfere with our friendship.”

What was he talking about?  When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer at the high school in the royal village, the king, who was patron to the school, attended faculty meetings and we became friends.  So my wife, Qenehelo and I found ourselves invited to the palace in the capital for lunches and dinners as often as twice a week.  The king was so informal that he once greeted my wife with “Hello, gorgeous!”

 US policy toward South Africa was not popular at the time, but the local ANC leader and future Minister of Constitutional Law said “Bill’s a brother.”  After dinner discussions with prominent people were the norm but the topics were as informal as to whether it was OK for husbands to beat their wives.   The king once asked for my views on policy toward South Africa.   When I started rattling off official policy the king replied “I want to know what you think.   If I want policy I’ll ask the ambassador.”    So we were friends.

Then, without warning, the military staged a coup in 1986, and installed the king, formerly a ceremonial figure, as absolute leader.  The dinner guests I had known suddenly became ministers and I was on a first name basis with over half the cabinet.

One of the American speakers I invited to Lesotho was Ed O’Brien, leader of a “Street Law” program in DC.  The idea was to teach students that when they walked the streets, the law was in effect and applied to everybody.  Who better to host a seminar with Ed than the king?  He had majored in law at Oxford and was patron of the high school in his village.  So Ed came and presented his program in the palace with ministers in attendance.   After Ed left the king called me and said he wanted to set up a street law program in Lesotho.

I was subsequently called to the palace for a one-on-one with His Majesty to discuss how we could work together.   Foreign Service Officers dream of situations like this, sitting down with a head of state to talk about democratizing their country.   So our Street Law program for Lesotho was born.  I sent a law professor from the national university to the US to study street law and when he returned to Lesotho he worked with an American specialist, Margaret Fisher whom I had invited on a six month working visit to Lesotho.

The American lawyer and the Mosotho professor worked together: a textbook on the law of Lesotho was created and introduced into the classroom, and a mock trial, featuring student “lawyers” and presided over by an actual high court judge took place.  The whole program was a first (and only) experience for me.

Since those heady days the king was killed several years later in an auto accident.   But there hangs on our wall in northern Virginia a lovely Basotho weaving, the king’s parting gift to us when we left the country in 1987.

 

How We Got Married: A Love Story

I am married to a Mosotho woman.   How did this come about?  It’s a story that stretches over years.  During my fifth and final year as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho when Qenehelo was working at Catholic Relief Services, and where I was friends with the staff, we got in the habit of having Friday dinners together in the room where she was living.   I would come in from Matsieng, call her at CRS, buy some chicken, vegetables and wine, and go to her room.  She cooked and we dined by candlelight.   The latter was partly for atmosphere and party because there was no choice: there was no electricity.  Basically we were two friends who enjoyed each other’s company.

When it was time for me to go to Washington to begin my training for the Foreign Service, Qenehelo was at the airport to see me off.  Over the nine months of training we sent each other letters.  We were allowed to say where we would like our first posting to be and, needless to say, I chose Africa, resulting in my being posted to Zambia.  So in September I set off, with a detour through Lesotho, where I met again with Qenehelo, and spent my nights visiting my old school in Matsieng.  Before I was scheduled to leave for Lusaka, I went to Qenehelo’s new house on the hills above Maseru to say goodbye and to invite her to visit me in Zambia at Christmas time

Alas she wasn’t there.   I waited for what seemed to be a long tine and finally decided to bag it.   Just as I was leaving I heard a familiar voice saying “U ea kae uena,” where are you going you?  We happily met, I invited her to visit, and my spirits were lifted.  We’ve often speculated since then that if I had left a few minutes earlier or she had arrived a few minutes later, we never would have gotten married.

Fast forward to December: Qenehelo arrived and we had a great time, touring the city, visiting a game park, and meeting my colleagues.  This time we were sure: we decided to get married!   We were so happy that we went to the church of the Order of Poor Claires, where I had been teaching English to a few nuns, to give thanks.

There are many steps that have to be taken before getting married in Lesotho: after Qenehelo returned home, I wrote a letter to her mother asking permission to marry her daughter and her mother replied that I had done the right thing by asking permission, but I must be sure this wasn’t a “whirlwind romance,” (her brother translating).  In June of that year Qenehelo returned to Zambia to stay with me.

By December we decided to do the deed and returned to Lesotho.  First I had to negotiate with Tumisang, Qenehelo’s older brother and, with the passing of their father, the head of the family, over lobola, the bride price.  I was happy to be able to provide some financial backing for her mother.  Then I was interviewed, one by one, by several village women.   A woman would come into Qenehelo’s hut, heave a sigh, sit down and quiz Qenehelo’s mother.   After a while she woul nod her head positively and leave.   Finally I had to visit the village chief, so he could approve the marriage since lobola had been paid.

On December 23^rd Qenehelo, Tumisang and I went to Maseru to ask the district administer to marry us.  Alas Christmas celebrations were well underway; administrators were dancing and crying out “Happee, happee!”   A lost cause.   We returned on December 28, went into the administrator’s office where we found a secretary with her head on the desk.   The administrator was at the bank; try coming back in the afternoon.  In the meantime, Tumisang laid down a gratuity and we had a license.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, we returned and were told the administrator would marry us at 3 pm.   Woah!   Thirty minutes to prepare emotionally!   But we did and were married with two other couples amid stern warnings that I faced jail time if I had another wife.   Next stop, Morija where we woke up a minister who prayed for us.  Then to Qenehelo’s house and off to our honeymoon in Mauritius; a lovely island in the Indian Ocean.

That was thirty one years ago and we’re still happily married.

 

Volunteering in Lesotho

 

I know I have pontificated on the fact that the past is beyond our reach, that the only thing we can control is the present and the future.   So why do I continue to waltz down memory lane?  Because that’s what old guys like to do.

But wait!  At the end of my last posting I had just been deported from a Mexican jail, dropped off in the San Antonio airport with no money, possessions, nor anywhere to go.  Aha!   I had my wallet and in it was a Gulf Oil card which also worked at Holiday Inns.  I called the van and if the driver wondered about a scruffy guy with no luggage who smelled like a barn, he didn’t let on.   Soon I had a clean room, a phone, and access to a tasty salad bar.  I called the US Embassy in Mexico City and persuaded them to retrieve my luggage and send it to San Antonio.

The next day I went to the state employment office and got a job as a landscaper.   When the owner of the house heard my story he gave me some spare shirts and jeans.  After work I went to a $15 a week hotel, said I didn’t have any money but I would soon.   Amazingly he let me stay.  With my earnings, a trip to the Salvation Army store, I almost didn’t need my possessions when they arrived three weeks later.

Eventually I wound up again in Boulder, Colorado, and found in my post office box a letter from the Peace Corps inviting to go to Lesotho to teach English.   I didn’t even know that Lesotho was the name of a country in Southern Africa.  Wow, here were people lived and grew up in a part of the world I knew nothing about.  I accepted with enthusiasm.

In Lesotho, after three weeks of Sesotho language training, a week in a village, I found myself in Matsieng, a lovely village set on a hill overlooking a valley.  Everybody lived in round mud huts with thatched roofs.  It was the traditional village of the king and the site of Moshoeshoe II High School.   I stayed in a brick house with two other volunteer teachers.    I was assigned two eighty minute classes.   I had radical ideas about education, creativity and self expression.  My students quickly let me know they were not interested in writing original poems on the blackboard; they wanted help preparing for exams.

I loved the daily life of the village.  Breakfast with my house mates, morning assembly, classes, and lunch in the cafeteria where the daily menu was corn meal mush (called “papa”) and fried cabbage.  After afternoon classes some students always visited me and danced to the music on my short wave radio.   They were determined that I shouldn’t have to be alone.   They taught me Sesotho -sometimes mischievously.    Apparently the word for clouds and the human posterior was the same causing gales of laughter as I tried the new word.

Once, when I was in bed with a nasty cold, a group of students pooled their resources, went to the tiny store made of cinder blocks bought some “Woods Wonderful Peppermint Cure” and brought it to me.  I doubt that the medicine had much effect on my cold but it did wonders for my spirits

I was also an informal medical resource.  A girl once came to me with a swollen and infected finger.  I soaked it in hot salty water and wrapped it in gauze.  Another student was stabbed n a fight rare) and I cleaned the wound, applied iodine, and covered it with gauze.

I once played peace-maker during the “war” between the day scholars (who lived in Matsieng) and the boarders (the majority).  The weapons were stones.  The boarders asked me to accompany them at night as they walked to their dorm.   It was risky because the day scholars were lying in wait in the dark.  The boarders shone their flashlights me (a respected neutral presence) as we walked by.   No stones were thrown and a lasting truce was established.   I think it was the most scary thing that happened to me over my five years there.

Another time I was summoned to the girls’ dorm because several girls were hysterical.   When I got there they were yelling and thrashing about.   I couldn’t talk to them or calm them down so I rushed to the village clinic, staffed by a nurse, and almost literally dragged her to the girls’ dorm where she had no luck.  My next step was one of our Tanzanian teachers who had a pickup truck.   I loaded the girls into the back and asked the teacher to dive them to the hospital, five miles away.  Nothing serious was the diagnosis, just something adolescent girls go through.

I loved the teaching, reading prescribed texts (set by the examining board) and talking about them.   In large classes the problem was the not all students had a chance to talk.   So I used six so-called “extensive readers” divided the class into six groups, each with a separate book, and prepared discussion questions.   Then we went to the library where six student discussion leaders led class discussions in English while I strolled around.  Each of the books was on the exam.

On weekends we usually took a forty minutes bus ride to Maseru, the capital, where we stayed with other volunteers and bought provisions for the next week.   We had no refrigeration so buying food for a week was a challenge.   We bought vegetables from women who sat in a field with the produce from their gardens.  I was the default cook.   One of my dishes my housemates named (not entirely seriously) was “cabbage delight.”   I cooked rice on the bottom of a big pot, later added a load of chopped cabbage and onion, and topped it off with cheese.   Not high gourmet food, but we ate it once a week.  Our stove was a primus kerosene pressure cooker, about like cooking with a blow torch.

I knew after about three weeks at the school that the usual two year stint for volunteers would not be enough.  So I “re-upped” for a third year, after which I went home for a few months, and missed Lesotho so much I bought a one way ticket back.  I re-enrolled in the Peace Corps and remember fondly my return to Matsieng.  When I arrived all the students came out of their classes (the principal stayed in his office) and started dancing and singing “Ntate Bill (as I was known) is back.”  I was so happy.

A word about Sesotho which I was moderately able to use socially.  “Ntate” was a title with the respect of “father” and the warmth of “dad.”

Towards the end of my fifth year, the chairman of the trustees arrived, fired the principal and the Basotho teachers (a long standing feud) and left me in charge.   I had two Tanzanian teachers and an Iranian woman who was primarily interested in promoting the Bahai faith, and 500 students.   I led the morning assembly as I had been doing for some time (hymn, prayer and announcements) taught my English classes, but ultimately had to send home all the students except those preparing for exams.   It was a challenging end to the best five years of my life.

When the board chairman asked me to be the principal for the next year, I knew it was time to move on to the next chapter of my life: the Foreign Service.

 

When I Was Young and Reckless

My daughter Palesa has informed me that I don’t have to be profound in my blog.   This sets my mind at ease.

If anybody can stand an old gasbag reminiscing about in his past, I’m going to talk about an 18 month adventure which virtually shaped the rest of my life.  In 1973, after 13 years of high school teaching, I decided to throw off restraint, resign my job, discharge myself of most possessions and hit the road, Jack Kerouac style.

I had a back pack, a sleeping bag, a two man tent, cooking utensils, and a small gas stove.  Since I was in Connecticut at the time, the logical direction was west, so I stood out on the street with my thumb out.  Hitchhiking, with its many qualities at the time, was a great was to meet new people.  In a few days I found myself in Boulder, where I went to the local office of the state employment agency.   They sent me to a dude ranch where my job was picking up bales of hay and loading them onto the back of a truck.  This led to work cleaning out the horse stables. 

This led next to peach picking in western Colorado where for two or three weeks I shared a cabin with seven other pickers.  They would have been described as hippies.  Whatever, they were great people and all were vegetarians.   Not wishing to be disruptive, I too became a vegetarian and remain one to this day.  My rationale: I didn’t want to kill animals to feed myself.

We decided as a group to set off for apple picking in the Yakima Valley of Washington, using the car of one of the pickers.   After spending a few days in Yellowstone National Park, we wound up at an orchard where we were put in another pickers’ cabin.  We prepared food in a central eating shack with about twenty other “hippies.”  All were on various religious experiments: as a result it took at least five minutes for various contributions to grace from reciters of “Om” to fervently Christian prayers.  We were paid $15 for filling a 25 bushel bin.   Many of our co-pickers were Canadians.

Flushed with picking cash, I bought an old station wagon for $195 and headed west for hiking in the Cascades Mountains and then the Olympic range where my tent, sleeping bag and stove were mighty handy.

I next headed south with a couple of hitchhikers I had picked up and wound up at a lily bulb farm in northern California.   I hadn’t known there was such a thing a lily bulb farm, but we learned to  climb on the sides of a potato picker, a tractor with a digging fork, a conveyor belt and places for the men to stand.  As the belt moved we picked the bulbs up as they passed by and loaded them into boxes.   The farm had an assembly line where the bulbs were potted in soil, all ready to bloom in time for Easter.  We slept in an abandoned farm amid the cow stalls.  

After a stop in San Francisco at the home of a friend of my two hitchhiker friends, I gave away the station wagon preparing to head south.   Before leaving I went to the Berkley employment office where there were pamphlets for the Marines and the Peace Corps and others.   While I was waiting for a job, I filled out a Peace Corps application and mailed it in.  I essentially forgot about it until months later a letter showed up in my rental P.O. Box in Boulder inviting to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho.  How little we know that small acts can lead to big changes: I went to Lesotho, where I taught for five years, met my wife, applied for the Foreign Service in which I served fourteen years, all the result of filling out an application while waiting for a day labor job.

I next went to Yuma, Arizona, where I picked lemons.   Many of our co-workers were Mexicans.  There were border guards in spiffy uniforms and whenever we saw them we alerted the Mexicans who magically vanished until we gave the all clear.  To this day, I’ve been partial to undocumented immigrants and am an enthusiastic supporter of legislation granting them a path to citizenship.

Finally I left Arizona and headed south eventually to Mexico City where I joined the North-American-Mexican cultural institute and started taking Spanish lesson.   To support myself, I took to playing my recorder (which I had packed) in the streets.  I earned enough to support myself, but, alas, I was picked up by the police for working without a permit.  This led to five days in jail where I continued to play my recorder to the applause of the other inmates.  Eventually I was escorted out and we headed for the airport.  But my backpack was in a $1.50 a night hotel and I begged to go pick it up.   Not possible.   I was put on a plane which eventually wound up in San Antonio, Texas.  There I was with no possessions, little money, and nowhere to go.

How I survived and thrived is another story for another time.

What will I do with the rest of my life?

What will I do with the rest of my life? People looking forward to retirement often have idealized pictures of what it will be like: after a lifetime of work, with all its stresses, we dream of a hammock under a palm tree near the ocean or travel to exotic places. Rest is surely deserved after so many years of work. But ultimately we have to ask, what will I do now, one of life’s truly existential questions. The past is history beyond our power to change; regardless of how old we may be, the only thing we can control is what lies ahead. Two wonderful examples come to mind: Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to working with the poorest of the poor, “the least of these my brethren.” The other is my personal hero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against apartheid. He later became the model of forgiveness as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a man who has known great suffering and who is capable of great joy. But living well is not always so easy for people who are old. What will Pope Benedict, by his own admission frail and tired, do at Castle Gondolfo? Or there is the case of a friend of mine, now in an assisted living facility, who says he gets most depressed in the morning, thinking nothing lies ahead in the day but sitting in a chair, watching TV or reading. When I retired at age 76, I resolved I’d keep myself busy volunteering. So for five years I taught ESL, Mondays and Wednesdays at our day labor center (now closed) and Saturdays at our local human resources center. All of my students were Latino immigrants, wonderful people whom I loved working with. I also volunteered at our local homeless shelter giving me the reward of working with another group of great people. Saturday evenings I ushered at George Mason University Center for the Arts. I got to sit in on half of the concerts while getting to know my fellow ushers. Why was volunteering important? I was doing it because I wanted to, not for pay. It was great to have everybody smiling and laughing and enjoying learning a new language. By chance three of our students lived next door to us and you can imagine how happy I was to get a bear hug from a student I met at the grocery store. It was also a revelation to get to know homeless people as people and to listen as a friend to their stories. But after five years I had to admit that I was no longer up to these activities. So all I do regularly is go to the gym in the morning and to church on Sundays. Thank God for my family and my church, but I’m still looking to improve the quality of my life and surely that’s why I’ve taken to writing this blog.