They Don't Call Lesotho the Mountain Kingdom for Nothing!

Lumelang!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Passover/Easter. (Ka Sesotho, Easter is Paseka, which sounds very much like Pesach to me, so when I said Paseka e monate, I kind of combined the two holidays in my head!) It’s starting to get very cold here in the Southern hemisphere! Now that I’ve moved to the South of Lesotho, I’m much higher in elevation than I was back in Berea, so I get to deal with that added coldness of the mountain elevation. I’m not sure what will be worse, the heat of summer or the cold of winter. But I guess we’ll find out! I’ve heard that July is the coldest month, so hopefully I don’t turn into an ice cube. I’ve got my handy gas heater to heat my home, and cooking helps heat the inside of my rondeval up as well! So I’m hoping to bake more in the winter, and also perfect the dutch oven brownie recipe. I’m getting very close to perfect brownies!

So if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I have now moved into my new community in the Southern district of Quthing! (Quthing is pronounced like koo-ting, but the Q is a roof of the mouth click sound. Try it at home, kids!) If there’s one thing I’d take away from my first few weeks in my new home, it’s that they don’t call Lesotho the Mountain Kingdom for nothing. The views in this village are absolutely stunning. The location of my village is essentially on the side of a mountain, kind of in between a valley and a peak. So when I walk out of my house every morning, my first view is lush, green, mountains directly in front of me. There is also a beautiful river right next to my host family’s compound that I get to cross every day on my way to work. I actually have to cross two rivers on my way to work, it really makes the 20-25 minute walk to the clinic very fun. My hiking boots will be my best friends for the next year and six months!

I really have been welcomed with open arms in my new village, which has been really kind and very much needed. It was very stressful moving to a new place that is far more remote than my last site, but the staff at the clinic made the transition very easy. I also have a site mate, which is another Peace Corps volunteer who lives and works in the same village, or a neighboring village. In this case, she lives about five minutes from my house, and the clinic is right above the secondary school, where she teaches math. Having her also welcome me, help me unpack, and show me around has been really encouraging in such a stressful time, and I’m excited to work closely with her on joint projects in the future! One of the only downsides of living here that I’ve come to learn is the service is quite unreliable. There is one service tower which provides network to this area, and it often gets hit by lightning during storms and goes out for a few days. We also had the electricity go out earlier this week and the service was down during and after that as well (but isn’t it awesome that I have electricity now?!). It is definitely frustrating to not be able to connect to family and friends when this happens, but it is something that I’ll have to adjust to!

So far at the clinic, I’m still working on a needs assessment, but the staff and I have been starting with small projects to organize the clinic. Last week, we re-organized the ART (Anti-retroviral Therapy) cards to a more efficient system. All patients who are on treatment for HIV have these ART cards which track the disease progression, adherence, and store any other relevant information like blood test results and viral load. When the patient has an appointment, this ART card is used by the nurses to understand the patient’s unique needs. All patients own what is called a Bukana, which is a small book in which nurses and staff write the results of their appointment, and prescribe medication on. When the patients arrive to the facility, they present their bukanas and the results of their visit are written down in them. For patients who are on HIV treatment, they have a unique number written on their bukana which corresponds to their ART cards. The system that the clinic was using before we reorganized often misplaced cards and only some of the staff knew how to file the cards correctly. So we instead made a system which files them by unique number, and it has been much easier for the staff to use! I learned about this system from the previous clinic I worked at, so I’m glad I was able to bring that knowledge to this clinic.

My next project is to work with staff to organize the pharmacy, and the store room where the medications are kept. I started this project, but it definitely still needs more work. But I’ll have to put that on hold, because my May is going to be very busy! Next week, I will be heading to a training called GRS (Grassroots Soccer). This program teaches youth about HIV prevention through sports and soccer games. It is a yearlong program with a graduation ceremony at the end, and we’ll meet once a month with the youth. I will be bringing two counterparts from my new community, a woman who is a teacher at the primary school in town, and one of my male co-workers at the clinic who is a nurse. He is super motivated about working with youth, and is young so he’s able to relate to them more. I can’t wait to start working with him on adolescent health programs at the clinic! We will hopefully be able to implement GRS as an after school program, probably when it starts getting warmer out. I am very excited about this training! Then, the weekend after this workshop, I will be going to a music festival in eSwatini (former Swaziland) called Bushfire! I am very excited to have a little vacation, and a ton of the volunteers from my cohort are going, so that will be really fun. It’s also common for Peace Corps Volunteers from eSwatini, South Africa, and Botswana to go, so it’ll be really cool to meet some other volunteers in Southern Africa!

Then the crazy traveling doesn’t stop, because the beginning of June is also very busy! First of all, I have a meeting for Gender Equity Lesotho (GEL) which is a Peace Corps committee I applied and was accepted to. Committees are part of the Peace Corps program in most countries, and in Lesotho, we have four. HIV Action Team (HAT), Gender Equity Lesotho (GEL), Diversity and Inclusion, and Technology. Each committee does something different, but the point is to be resources for volunteers and be a bridge between staff and volunteers about various issues. GEL works with providing resources for gender related topics, as well as working on projects related to gender on a national scale. I’ll learn more about what I’ll be working on with GEL once I go to the meeting! And a week after that meeting, I’ll be returning to Maseru for yet another workshop called PDM. This workshop is to mark 6 months at site (for most volunteers who haven’t been moving around like I have), and it works on grant writing and implementing projects. We will bring a counterpart from ourcommunity to this training as well. And then hopefully for the rest of June and July, we can start working on implementing adolescent health projects at the clinic. It’s a slow process of actually starting the “real” work, but it is important to understand the needs of the community first and be integrated as a member of the staff. Then hopefully, the projects we start can have a real chance of having a lasting impact after we have gone.

That’s all for now, it’s going to be a busy few months, but I can’t wait to learn and have fun in May and June. As always, I love hearing from everyone at home so don’t be shy to reach out! Sala hantle!