So the Mail Man is Sick

So the mail man is sick.

I got word from Kristen, a fellow PCV who I share a mailbox with (and who happens to be from the same little island in the Caribbean as my buddy Steve!) that I had a package waiting for me at the post office! Hurray!

I love Packages.

So, on my way back from All-Vol (way back two weeks ago) I stop off at the Postng (as we call it in Sasotho). Its hard to describe to you in mere words how excited I was!

I could hardly sit still in the Combi (taxi) out to Ha Khabo. My feet were dancing a jig I hardly knew, my hands trebled in gleeful anticipation, my mind ran circles around the limitless possibilities of what this mystery package might contain! Perhaps it had a book in it? Maybe some month old news papers! Even better! Coffee!!

Leaping from the combi I dashed up the mountain like a little kid on his birthday, expecting to find a puppy or a new bike under the tree (this metaphorical kid happened to share a birthday with Jesus). It was all poor Melody could do to keep up.

A few words about this sudden new character in my narrative. Melody is the "new girl" in the hood. She's new to Peace Corps, just came in with the new Education group. We all met up at all-vol and then met up again in BB when we all got back from All-Vol. BB got 5, count them, 5! New volunteers in this batch. Thats more than any other district! Poor Melody is my neighbour (just 15K down the road! Thats less than a half marathon... I think). So we were riding home together.

She thinks I'm nuts.

And she's probably right.

Back to skipping up the hill to the Post office. Minutes (which felt like years) later I stumble into the office and inquired as to my package.

I say "Me', there is a package for me. Can you please get it?"

Me' replies "No"

I exclaim "!?!?"

She says "Ntate is on sick leave, he has the keys to the vault." Its nice of them to lock my stuff up.

My hopes are dashed. I would like you to picture a young boy who just lost his balloon, tears streaming down his face as he looks to the heavens and asks, "is there no justice?" And that poor, defeated, balloonless child hears nothing but affirming silence. Casting his gaze back from the cruel heavens that mercilessly snatched his dreams, down, down to that filthy floor, that same floor which steals ice cream cones like the robber barons of old, he feels nothing but shame. Shame for allowing his youthful glee to compel him to hold that one idea he falls victim to with each balloon, each ice cream cone, the single feeling which compels him, against his better judgement, to believe in the world again;

Hope in a better, balloon filled, future.

Needless to say, I was a little disappointed in not getting my package that day.

Yet just like that child, who the next day mindlessly grips his balloon in one hand and precariously licks a vanilla ice cream scoop teetering atop a cone grasped in the other (for vanilla is the finest of the flavours), oblivious to the previous days heart break and despair, I returned the next day. Again with that most poisonous of feelings; Hope.

The mail man is sick. He has been sick for the past two weeks. This is a fact.

And, as with all facts, it is something to be overcome. An obstacle to be conquered. A hindrance of the material world that our existential selves struggle against.

The humanitarian in me hopes that he is ok, that he feels better soon, and that whatever ails him is minor and passing. The capitalist in me wishes the illness would over take him soon and someone would get that damn key already!

These are not good thoughts for a Peace Corps Volunteer to be thinking.

So often do I wander my way down to the post office that the woman there simply gives me a look when I arrive. I know that look. That look means "try again tomorrow". That look is one of mutual understanding, for she feels my pain. At least as far as I can inflict it upon her. Her suffering is great, for every other day she hears my pleading.

"Isn't there a spare key? What about a lock smith? I think I can get my hands on some dynamite! Can we at least try the dynamite?"

I was really pulling for the dynamite. . .

Be grateful my western friends. The mail is something we often take for granted. We trust in those happy, blue clad, men and women to get us our stuff. They take our stuff with little more payment than 40 some odd cents (or what ever ridiculous price they charge these days, greedy bastards) and pass our stuff along their invisible chain until our stuff arrives, exactly as expected, two or three odd days later. If someone gets sick... well... I don't think they do get sick. They are super-non-gender-specific-individuals!

The system works. And doesn't stop working. Ever.

Be grateful.

I do get over zealous at times. For the record (Peace Corps Washington/Big Brother take note) I have no access to dynamite. There is a Lesotho Defence Force base less than 2 or 3 K down the road from the Post office. Despite my best efforts and most persuasive arguments (and I can be very persuasive) they still wont lend me any dynamite.

So I wait. I wait for the mail man to get to better. I wait for public institutions to catch up with the 21^st century. I wait for my package and all the limitless bounty contained therein. I wait for a spare key to surface and for peace and justice to prevail. I wait for dynamite, or at least masked bandits on horseback with dynamite.

I wait for that poor little kid, watching his balloon sail off into the vast blue nothingness of life, to grow a little wiser, a little less hopeful, and maybe a little more patient.

Because in Africa, as in life, sometimes we need to tell that little kid to hold his horses as the older, wiser, adult takes out a book and just...

. . .waits

A strange ride

The other day I hopped in a taxi heading up to check my mail at Ha Khabo. When I got in I noticed something special about this taxi, there was a Chinese lady in it. You may not appreciate the value of this sitting back home in our wonderfully multi-cultural nation, but rest assured that this was a site to behold.

A little background on the Chinese/Basotho relations. The Chinese have come to Lesotho within the last 10 to 20 years, mainly setting up factories and small shops (called Machina shops. The Chinese are called Machina). The Chinese came to Lesotho primarily to, you guessed it, make money. And make money they have. The Basotho are happy to work for low wages and long hours and the Chinese are happy to oblige. Well as with all workers, the Basotho feel there over worked. On top of that, the Machina shops have a bad reputation. Most Basotho think the Chinese are trying to cheat them and exploit them (which may be true at least a little bit.) The misunderstandings have lead to out right racism on the part of the Basotho. To hear them talk about the Chinese is like attending a Klan rally some times. Its gotten so bad that Peace Corps wont even allow Asian Americans to serve in Lesotho.

With their money the Chinese usually buy cars for themselves (but not nice ones, usually run down trucks), so to see a Chinese woman on a taxi with me was a surprise! I was straight up staring! My world had been rocked to see a Chinese on public transport.

Then it hit me. When I hop on a taxi I often get looks. When I walk down the street people will stop and stare. At the shops the cashiers often don’t even know what to do.

Now I know why.

Seeing this Chinese woman put me right in the shoes of the Basotho who stare at me. I was right there with ‘em. Now I get it.

At the same time I felt a certain affinity to this Chinese woman. Sympathy, compassion, empathy. I had been (and still was) in her shoes.

The Chinese don’t really get out much (who can blame them, some times there are physical assaults!) and don’t really talk to outsiders. We have a volunteer here who spent some years over in China with a study abroad program and speaks Mandarin. I’m rather jealous.

I think the Chinese story in Lesotho is one that’s not getting told.

Happy New Year and all that Jazz

It’s the New Year! Happy 2009 everybody.

I hope it’s a good one.

One tradition I’ve never been too good at was the formulation (and completion) of New Years resolutions. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the concept. I even like it. Here you are, at the arbitrary changing of numbers and you naturally look back at your life and say “damn, what have I been doing?”

So you try to change.

Its just that I lack that self reflective, objective ability to see fault in myself. Some call that humility. I’m more or less awesome.

Ok, that was mostly a joke, but in all honestly its been hard in the past to pin point exactly what it is about my life that I want changed. There are the old stand by’s; exercise more, spend less money, read more books, but these aren’t really things I “dislike” about my self, or even think I’m doing “wrong”, just things that everyone should be doing more of (or less of as it comes to spending money).

This year is different. This will be an entire year spent in a different hemisphere. I will spend 365 days in a place I’m not native to and where most people don’t speak my language. This makes the New Years Resolution thing all the more challenging. For starters I can say I defiantly don’t need to read much more than I do now. The old stand-by’s are gone. Whats going to take they’re place?

Save the world more?

Do cool things more?

See Africa more?

None of it seems to fit.

I always felt that New Years Resolutions should be something that takes real courage and real personal insight to first, admit and second, to complete. They should be things about yourself that truly, honestly, need changing. If its easy it probably doesn’t mean much.

Or maybe I’m asking too much from a simple resolution.

The moral, I suppose, is that this entire year will be a total mystery.

Bring it on 2009!

An idea! Post your New Years Resolution’s here in the comments section. I’d love to read what you all plan on doing with your lives in the coming year.

Don’t worry, I don’t judge too much.