Third Site's the Charm!

Alright friends and family you’ll never guess what’s going on in Aliza’s Peace Corps adventure. So let’s do a little summary of my time in Lesotho, shall we?:

• September 2018- I arrive in Lesotho and meet all my wonderful friends and family in our training village. I visit the south of Lesotho for HVV (host volunteer visits) and get to see a lot of the Southern districts. About a month into training, I was given my site location! A very exciting time for all of us trainees. I packed up my bags and visited my site in Mokhotlong, high up in the mountains of Northern Lesotho.
  

(This is where I was going to be living in Mokhotlong)

• December 2018- Two weeks before swearing in, I was informed that my site has unfortunately pulled out, and no longer requires a volunteer. I was extremely disappointed since I had (in my short three days in Mokhotlong) fallen in love with Northern Lesotho. So I went into swearing in with a lot of uncertainty, not knowing where I’d be, who I’d be around, and when I’d even be moving to a new place. I stayed in the host village for about two weeks, upset that I was alone, but hoping to have a new site soon. Fortunately, a new potential site was found and I got all excited to move to Berea, a district in the North of Lesotho, very close to Maseru, the capital.
  
• December 31^st- I move into my new site and sleep happily in my twin bed with my new sheets after a full day of moving, waking up at midnight to the sound of people celebrating, and it felt like a perfect start to the New Year. I was finally at my permanent site, everything was going great, and I could finally start the work I came here to accomplish.

     (Here's me in front of my home in Berea)

• January-March 2019- I get to know my village- the people in it, the sights, my amazing co-workers. I spend time with my host family, canning peaches with my ausi (sister), being a good sport as my mme (mom) feeds me chicken livers and moroho (spinach), playing cards with my neighbors, and talking with all the bo-mme (women) at the water tap once a week. I start to really love my life here. I start to identify counterparts for projects and become part of the clinic family. But there were still some uncertainties. Since arriving at my new site the DHMT (District Health Management Team) has not fully approved the idea of me working at the clinic. Now, the DHMT is in charge of all the government clinics in a given district. Peace Corps sets up talk after talk with them, meets with them and answers questions about what the volunteer’s role in the clinic will be. We get verbal approval, from the staff, and we think the situation is remedied. But then, they seem to go back on their approval and claim that Peace Corps is not answering all of their questions. This goes on for three months, essentially.

(At the surprise baby shower we threw for our Pharmacist)

(views from my village)  (My ausi and our neighbor)

 (some kids who live near my after teaching me how to play a ball game!)
(My coworker, Naleli)

 (learning how to can peaches!)

• Wednesday, March 20^th- I have a meeting with Peace Corps staff in Maseru at the office. They inform me that the situation is essentially stuck with the DHMT. Since I cannot officially volunteer at the clinic without written approval, I will not be able to stay at my site. The good news is, they have found another site that is almost completely ready, has approval from the DHMT in that district, and a house has been identified and approved.

So here’s where we are now. I will be spending this last week at my current site. After this, from March 31^st to April 8^th, I will be going back to the training village for Phase Three training. I am going on a really short vacation after this to a small town in South Africa with my friends, and when I return to my site, I will be packing up and moving to a remote village in Quthing! Quthing is in the south of Lesotho, and I actually went there during HVV. It is a beautiful district, also extremely mountainous. It’s going to be quite a different experience, since I’ll be remote. I’ll be 2-2.5 hours from the nearest town, Mount Morosi, and taxis can be unreliable. It’s about a 4-5 hour trip to Maseru once I get to Mount Morosi. I’ll be way high up in the mountains, and it snows a LOT in the winter. So I’m headed for a very cold few months! But on the flip side, it’ll be much cooler in the summer and that’ll be nice because it’s been crazy hot here in Berea the last few weeks of summer. I will have a site mate, an education volunteer from my cohort who is teaching maths at the school in town. It’ll be really great to live near her, and work on joint projects. She loves hiking, so I can’t wait to have a hiking buddy! I’ll be working at the clinic in town, and it is also government run, just like the one I am working at now. I have a similar plan for projects at this site, but I can’t be sure of what I’ll work on until I see the resources and needs of the community.

I am certainly sad and disappointed to be leaving my current site, because I really love it. It feels like home. I’m frustrated that my Peace Corps experience is so uncertain and I haven’t been able to be settled anywhere, which means I can’t get work done. Mostly I’m disappointed that the groundwork for projects I had started at my current site will be scrapped and I have to start completely from scratch in a completely new place, in a new environment. However, I am excited to live in the South. I actually really wanted to be placed in Quthing when we first put in our preferences for sites back in October. I’m excited to have a site mate in such a remote area, that’ll be great. I’m also feeling optimistic about the work I’m going to be doing there. I mean, looking at the amount of work I got done at my current site in just three months, I think I’ll be able to accomplish a lot in the same period of time. I had practice! And this time, I’ll be able to start projects right away because I’ll be arriving there after Phase Three training. While I’ll miss Berea tremendously, I am excited about the potential of this new site, which (unless my luck is gets worse, somehow), will be my permanent site for next year and eight months.

Six months living in Lesotho, and I’ve come to this conclusion: Everything happens for a reason, and you have to stay flexible. I’ll leave you all with this experience I had a few weeks ago.

I was standing in the rain, waiting for a taxi to go to town. While I was waiting, a taxi going the opposite direction drove past, and told to get in, as they were going to turn around shortly. I agree, and as soon as I get in and we start driving, a taxi going the correct direction drives by. Dammit, I thought, I could have just waited two more minutes and I’d already be on my way to town. But, I figured, it’d be fine. We’ll turn around at the other taxi stop and be on our way shortly. But I was wrong. We did turn around at the other taxi stop, but the drivers thought they’d wait for the taxi to fill a little more before we went to town. After ten minutes of sitting in the taxi, waiting for it to fill, I started to get annoyed. If only I had waited two more minutes! I’d be almost to town by now. Then, a woman gets on the taxi and we strike up a conversation. Turns out, she works for USAID with the DREAMS initiative which provides services to girls and women to ensure they stay in school, have sexual and reproductive health education, and assist with life skills education and job opportunities. We talk for a while, and though she doesn’t live nearby, she does a lot of programs in this area. She asked me if I’d ever want to assist her in any programs, to which I wholeheartedly agreed. Then, we started moving and I got to town at a reasonable hour. But if I had waited those two minutes, gotten on that other taxi and gotten to town twenty minutes sooner, I’d never have met this women and may not have known about this initiative in my area. What I’m trying to get at here, is even though this situation didn’t work out the way I initially wanted it to, it opened another door and other opportunities for me. That’s how I’m trying to look at this site situation. While it’s not the idea of Peace Corps I had when I arrived to Lesotho, and not the same path all the other volunteers are taking, I’m just trying to find the opportunities in the little inconveniences. I just have to believe that I’ll end up getting to where I’m going either way.

That’s it for now. I love hearing from everyone and it makes me so happy when you all reach out. I couldn’t be as positive and motivated without the constant support from my friends and family. Love you guys!

Sala ka Khotso! (Stay in peace)