Political Horses

Group singing to prepare for election

Elections are upon us in Lesotho.  The scheduled date of national elections is May 26th.  Parties are in full swing with events and meetings.  On the weekends people come out and sing, hold flags, line up their horses, and urge people to vote for their party.  There are many parties here, so it is hard to keep track of it all, but there are at least 2 major parties and from what people are saying it will be a very close election.  The current prime minister formed a new party to run with and there has already been a bit of fighting (actual physical fighting) even within this one party.  I hope for the people here that all goes smoothly and there is a clear winner.  One thing that I love about this whole process is that people come out from the villages  to the towns and there is a lot of horse riding happening.  One man wanted me to take his picture and he even let me sit on his horse, I didn't ride anywhere because I didn't have a helmet on (peace corps rule).  He even came to my school the next day to get a print out of the pictures!

Political Horse, all dressed up, no riding :( 

    On Sunday the new volunteer speech pathologist at our centre called me to say that Me Mary wanted us to walk over to see her house.  She is one of our teachers, I have blogged about her before, 64 years old and much stronger than me.  She started the school and worked for years without pay.  We walked with her out to her village above the town.  We got to meet her 3 grandchildren who she raises and we had a very yummy lunch.  She wanted me to teach the kids some yoga moves and they were naturals.  I asked her how long she had lived in her house and she said that she was able to rent the land around 6 years ago and she built the house herself.  She now has a few chickens and pigs and she also has a small garden.  Her house was simple, 2 beds and some stuff for cooking, but it seemed like such a nice way to live.  Sometimes I think that we complicate our lives with too much stuff.  Mary and her kids have only what they need and day to day they seem quite happy

The rest of my Sunday was quite good also.  I spent some time playing with the kids, reading and cooking.  I think the pace of life here is really nice and I know that I am going to miss it at home.  I had a group of about 6 kids playing UNO with me till it got dark out.  They loved it, my nephews love it too!  We also played with Amu in the wheelbarrow.

Mary in front of house she built with her hands

    At school this week we have almost finished the new classroom.  We did run into some more problems with our plumber and we have decided to find a new plumber to finish the job.  I held a review meeting with the teachers last week to go over many of the concepts we have learned about and this week the Speech Pathologist, Kirby, and I are planning a workshop on literacy and books.  Always a challenge when there are no or very few books in Sesotho, we are just going to use the ones we have in english and ask the teachers to adapt.  We set our date for the opening of our classrooms for May 17th.  All for now, thanks for reading.

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Mary's Kids doing Yoga