A new start...

January 24, 2008 (Written by Jason)

Good day to all our faithful readers out there in cyberspace. Over the last year and a few months you have followed the trails and tribulations of living as a cross-cultural, diplomatically placed volunteer here in the country of Lesotho. It has been a strange year, one full of extreme highs and disparaging lows. But through it all I have received many e-mails asking how if you were able to, how you could help.

Well now is that time. This week we began our second school year here in our village of Tsa-Kholo. I returned to school to find that after a great meeting with about 100 parents at the end of the school year about restoring the school, that work had already been done to this effect. I have told you all about how our class 5 is meeting in an old chicken coupe and that our class 3 and 4 share a large hall with no walls separating the 2 classes (hence it gets extremely loud in there). I haven’t really shared about our class 1 and 2 that meet in a building that was originally used as the first church on the site back around 1930. Yeah it is that old.

Over the years they have done the best they can installing windows and what not but they never got around to building the wall up to the roof and therefore it is like the class 1 and 2 are in the same room. Once again it gets extremely noisy during lessons and activities. Well, after a long and wonderful break from school, I returned to find that the parents of the school had torn down the old wall that was made of mud bricks and had begun building up a new wall of cinder blocks that had been scavenged from around the community.

The parents haven’t stopped there either. The parents have continued to gather bricks from around the community, while also smearing the wall with a nice thick clay, so that the wall can be used like a giant cork board. It is so cool. While working on the wall, some other parents cleaned and repaired (as best they can) the rest of the classes so that on the first day of the school, the teachers were able to come right in and start teaching classes.

Now if you have been following my blogs from the beginning you would realize that this is a dramatic difference from last year, when it took about 3 weeks for us to finally get down to the business of teaching. And that is not the only thing. This school, named Phechela Primary, is so motivated for change and progress that they have been going the entire school day taking only the breaks that they have scheduled and following the school time table as far as I have seen.

You may be thinking ‘well so they are doing what they are supposed to. Big deal!’ What you don’t understand is that this is a massive change in approach and philosophy. Last year I could barley get anyone to listen the smallest suggestions that I made. This year though, it is like everything that comes out of my mouth is gold the way that they are responding. I would say that 90% of my suggestions have been attempted or implemented and we are only going on day 4 of the first week of school. It is AWESOME!!

That all being said, I have decided to go forward with a project that I put in an application for earlier this year due to the nature of the commitment that I have seen thus far in words and in action. The project in its very basic form is a complete overhaul of the schools infrastructure. At its very core it is to provide a place that is safe , clean and more efficient than the current areas that exist for learning at the school. We will do this by repairing walls and floors, adding and completing walls in buildings to provide separate learning areas, new chalkboards, new doors and windows for classes that need them, and improving the facilities so that it is more conducive to continued learning.

However, I can only do this with your help. The Peace Corps does not provide funds for projects like this anymore. They have created an office called the Office of Private Sector Initiatives that handles projects for volunteers and gives family members and friends an outlet to donate to those projects. My community and I have completed an application for such a project and it has been approved by OPSI. They have issued me a project # which means that I can begin asking for support and help from all of you out there. If you feel that this is something that you would be interested in doing, please go to

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=632-047&region=africa

Then you can look for my project with the # 632-047. You can read more about the history of the school and the goals of the project. Also you can choose at that point if you want to make a donation to my project.

Once the full amount of the project has been funded, OPSI will cut me a check which I will then deposit in a bank account here and we will begin the reconstruction of my beautiful school. The only constraints that I am under are that I can not begin to work until I have received all of my funding. Now this may seem cruel but it is important as they don’t want half built libraries and pit latrines to be the legacy of Peace Corps volunteers. So it means that I need you to e-mail your friends and family, post notices at schools and churches, and help me get this thing funded!! The sooner it is, the sooner these beautiful kids can learn in an environment that is suitable and appropriate.

If you have ever felt that your donations go to some nameless project at best and at worst into the pockets of corrupt charities, this is your chance to donate directly to a school and a group that needs it. I will of course be updating this blog with pictures and links to pictures as often as I can and you will see your money directly at work. How cool is that?!?

Ok so that is it. No more begging for me. I hope that you feel compelled to give. I pray that this finds you all happy and healthy in the New Year. All the best

Jason

January 18, 2008 (written by Janeen)

Well we are done with our all volunteer conference/one year reconnect with our group. It was nice to be in Maseru and with other volunteers. School starts on Monday and things will get busy (at least for me). Right now I am waiting to see our doctor. I've got some funky things going on with my eyes. I had what I thought was a stye in one eye, then the exact same thing happened in the other eye, but worse. Now in each eye I have a small bump. So I might go on antibiotics. Well there's my health update for the year, sorry to bore you I am just tired of waiting! Miss you! Love you!

January 10th, 2008 (written by Jason)

Hello to all our loyal readers around the blog-o-sphere. I know that it has been quite a while since we have written anything. I know also that to many of you this is your only link to our adventure here in the mountain kingdom and that you look forward to reading about what we are doing. For this I am truly sorry but as I have mentioned many times before our internet use here is inconsistent at best and when we do get on it is usually to catch up on e-mails, check out the latest happenings in the news and maybe see what friends are doing on Facebook. We rarely have uninterrupted time to use the computer and write out a blog and then get on both websites to update them (hence the incongruity sometimes). We are going to be trying to be more diligent now that we are back home and we have our own computer.

You see for the majority of the last month we have been in and out of Lesotho on holiday/vacation. School let out for us around Nov. 30 and this afforded us about 6 weeks to do what we want. Before we could get to traveling and vacation we did a few technical trainings for the new group that arrived here around the 10th of November. This sucked up the first part of December.

About mid-December we left for our trips that included going to Cape Town and the surrounding area and touring Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe with Janeen’s family. I don’t want to bore you with everything that we did during that time but I do want to give you the highlights (and lowlights) of the trip.
Cape Town and surrounding area
• Great White Shark Cage Experience (seasick for the first time in my life)
• Camping
• Wine Tasting in Stellenbosch (awesome wine and cheese; check out Goats do Roam from the Fairview Vineyards. Easy drinking red blend)
• Table Mountain (didn’t hike it because we are lazy but it is beautiful)
• Beach
• Cape Point and crazy baboons
• Long Street (ripped off at a bar that raised its prices after 10 p.m. and had it printed in fine print on the last page of the menu.)
• Great food
• New Friends (Abby, Meera and Tamar and Christoff)
• Sleeping in

You can see we packed a bunch of stuff into a very short period of time. This is how we do things here though: long periods of work followed by sprint vacations. It is the only way we can do things affordably (you know we only get paid $235 a month, right?).

Almost immediately after coming home from Cape Town, Janeen’s family arrived from the states. It was so great having them here for Christmas and New Years. We had the joy of having Janeen’s parents, her brother and his wife, her sister, and her grandparents with us for 2 weeks. It was so cool being able to see them that it just made everything else just pale in comparison. Not to say that we didn’t do some amazing things. Here is a concise list. I am being serious too. We did way more than just the stuff mentioned here.

Lesotho
• Christmas Eve dinner of pea soup, Thai cucumber salad, rice and home made bread. It was a weird combo but it was the easiest thing we could do for 9 people on short notice (We thought we would have dinner at the hotel we were staying at, but it closed its services).
• Windy mountain roads are even more fun in the rain (right Carla ;-))
• Horse riding in the mud
• Amazing Christmas dinner
• Mountains- Yes grandpa there ARE mountains in Lesotho!!

Kosi Bay
• Lake system boat ride
• Hippos and birdlife
• Monkeys on the deck eating a mango at 3:30 a.m.
• Watched a Loggerhead turtle come up the beach, lay its eggs, bury them and go back to the ocean (long walk on the beach)
• Snorkeling (Devil Fish and Morrey Eels)

Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe side)
• Victoria Falls Hotel (a colonial beauty)
• Depressed economy (shelves were empty at the store and restaurants had more things missing from the menu than on them)
• Curio Markets and aggressive traders
• Bungee Jumping (only Jason)
• Gorge Swinging (unbelievable and again only Jason did this)
• Gorge Zip-Line
• River Cruise (that we missed because of the bungee jumping)
• The Falls (the awesome power of the Victoria Falls)
• Elephant interaction and riding
• Walk with lion cubs (so cool)
• Being chased by monkeys (both Janeen and Andy had an unwelcome monkey encounter)

Sabi Sands Reserve (Vuyetela)
• Big 5 Action (Lions, Elephants, Buffalo, Rhino (white), and a Leopard!! So cool)
• Best Massage in a year
• Lazy Afternoons in the plunge pool
• Amazing food!
• Great service
• Saying good-bye to family for another year 

Of course this is just a list of what we did and doesn’t really tell you anything about them. If you want to know about anything in further detail, either Janeen or I would love to fill you in. All you have to do is drop us a little message at either janeen_samuelian@yahoo.com or jason.samuelian@gmail.com and we will get back to you with details about a specific thing. We would love to be able to write about all of them but it would make a blog of like 20 pages and we know that you have lives and jobs that need attending too.

We know that many of you also would like to see what we did. For this we left it up to our family of paparazzi that followed us around. Janeen’s grandfather, father and brother all had really nice cameras so we just let them be our official photographers for this vacation. To view the photos all you have to do is go to Andy & Mari’s website at www.thelansfords.com From there you can read about their perspective of the vacation and check out some of our older photos from Lesotho and some new ones from this last vacation.

Let me know if you want to hear about anything in particular, otherwise I am just going to bore you with what is happening this year and what to expect from us in the upcoming year.

We love and miss you all.
Jason

January 10, 2008 (written by Janeen)
Jason did a great job at summarizing our trip. I tried to do that in a letter to his parents and it took me about 3 pages- hand written. So, mom and dad Sam expect a novel sometime soon. That is, of course, if it actually gets to you. Jason and Andy have kinda had a correspondence poker game going since we’ve been gone. I say kinda because it takes a long time, Andy took FOREVER to respond and they’ve pretty much just done 2 hands in 14 months! (Yes, I can still rile my brother up even though I am thousands of miles away!) Anyway back on track here… Jason folded his hand and we mailed the cards back to Andy in a letter sent back in September (Yes, I keep a list of the letters I send. Have you noticed that there is a small number on the left hand corner of the envelope?) and Andy hasn’t received that letter. So that saddens me to know that some letters are not getting back home. But, I guess if only a few don’t make it that is a pretty good percentage being that I have written about 325 since we’ve been gone. I respond to all letters or packages that are sent to us. So if you’ve written a letter and have not gotten a response, we either never got the letter OR my response is lost in post office space.

Today was the first day back on the job. We had a staff meeting that was supposed to start at 9:00am, but didn’t start until 10:00am because some members of staff weren’t here. This same meeting went until 3:00pm. There was sort of a break when the heads of departments were meeting to discuss which teachers would teach what classes, but we all had to hang around because there was not a specified time to meet back. At the end of the meeting it was discussed that we should start on time. I also put my two cents in that we should designate an end time and stay on task so that we can be done at a reasonable time. I didn’t mention this, but I think that it might even be helpful if the agenda was drawn ahead of time so that if there were other issues that needed to be addressed, staff members could bring them to the administration to either put them on the agenda or be saved for a later date. Maybe this is just my Americanism coming forth, but it does seem that the teachers here have other things they need to do and that they value their time and don’t want it wasted. Many times I feel like things can be done more efficiently, but maybe my culture is just different than theirs. Maybe they want the whole staff to be involved in decision making that I would deem fit for the administration. I just don’t know. Regardless I am only here for one more school year and I am still learning a lot even if I get frustrated sometimes.

We got the results back from the Junior Certificate exam (taken by Form C students) and our school did fairly well. We got 9 merit passes which is less than last year, but everyone was worried and in crisis-mode over these students that these results were not expected. We did have 5 failures, which they were upset about, but not surprised. One of the failures was a girl who got pregnant during the winter was expelled from school and went into labor while writing her exams. Needless to say she did not complete all of her exams so she failed. I am teaching 2 classes of Form C this year and the pressure is on to get good results. Not a single student earned an “A” in English from our school, so my goal is to get at least one. My principal says 20, but I try to be more realistic. I’ll of course be back in the good ‘ol US of A when the results are out, but will still be very interested in how my students perform.

I am working on a series of study skills workshops to do with students at the beginning of the year. I brought it to the attention of staff today and the idea was well received. I had 4 teachers volunteer to help, which I was very happy about. This way if it turns out to be good, they can continue teaching them when I am gone. I am also trying to type out a curriculum so that I can share it with other Peace Corps volunteers.

Today I also found out my work load. I will be teaching 3 more class periods than last year, and I will have different classes. I am kinda bummed about that and asked to switch, but it didn’t work out. I will have C1 (had them), C4 (new), B1 (had them), and A1 (new). I wanted to teach C1, C2, B1, and B2 to keep all my students since I know their names and their abilities. My head of department said that they wanted me to teach one form A class to help lay the foundation for their later years. Oh well, I’ll just have to learn about 100 new faces and names. I did it once, I’m sure I can do it again. The part about teaching 3 extra hours I am not stoked about since I have other things I want to work on like the study skills workshops, but I don’t always get what I want (despite what my husband might say!!).

Now that I’ve written a novel (sorry!), I have only one more thing to say. Thank you to all of you who have sent us packages and letters. We had another Christmas when we returned home from vacation and opened 11 packages! Five of them were those from my mom and grandparents that were being held hostage with a ridiculous tax rate since October. They were finally released for the bargain price of 10 Rand each! I have been working hard to respond to letters that we got while out on vacation. I’ve written about 15 since we’ve been back and still have 7 letters waiting for responses. I’ll try to get them done before school starts on the 21st because after that my main focus will be school and hanging out with my hubby (he doesn’t like it when I ignore him and write letters).

We’ll be home this year! YIPPEEEEE! Is it bad that we are already counting down? There are only 11 months until we are home. I’m told the second year goes by too fast, but I think I am OK with that.

Love you and miss you all,
Janeen

December 5, 2007 (written by Janeen)

Well I have been in Maseru since Sunday and have not had a chance to write a blog. Everytime I've come to get on the computers there have been several people waiting and all I've had time to do (without feeling guilty) is read my emails.

Things are going well. I am here helping with training of the new group. They are practice teaching this week. A school is having a summer session strictly for the new volunteers to practice. I think it is great practice for them and they are doing really well and responding to our critiques. I'm almost running out of suggestions!

There are less than three weeks until the whole Lansford clan comes out to Lesotho and we are really looking forward to their arrival. It will make it much easier being away from home for Christmas! Fortunately we get to go to Cape Town before they arrive. I think it would be pretty torturous having not all that much to do while we waited for them to arrive.

I am getting my mid-service medical done while I am here. So far all I've done is my TB test. It's only been 24 hours, but I am pretty sure that I am TB free (which is actually a good thing because some volunteers do get TB). I'll be sure to let you all know the final results after I find out tomorrow!

I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas season. We've been getting into the spirit by playing Christmas music, but somehow it feels strange singing along to wintry songs in summer, but it makes me happy! Miss you and love you all!

January 3, 2008 (written by Janeen)

Happy New Year! We hope that everyone is enjoying 2008 so far! We had a great Christmas and are enjoying spending time with family. We miss you all and will get a good update typed out when all settles down a bit. Be prepared for "Back from Vacation" blues from us!