Hello Friends,

How do you like the new header and video on my blog?

The round hut is called a rondavel, from the Afrikaans word rondawel. It’s the westernized version of an African-style hut.

I love the one I selected as it has a turquoise door. I might live in a rondavel in Lesotho, while I serve as a primary education teacher in Southern Africa. In case you didn’t know, I‘m heading off to the Peace Corps.

I want my new “look” to fit the changes in my life, and my casual video, and natural curly hair, are part of that change, and the new me.

Did you watch my video?

Here’s what’s happening over the next two weeks, and how the Peace Corps is  sending us off to Lesotho, Africa.

• On October 4th, I fly from California to Philadelphia.
• October 5th, I meet the 29 or so, other volunteers, who are serving as primary education teachers, or secondary math teachers, in Lesotho.
• On October 6th, we leave our hotel at 2 a.m. (Yes! we’re learning to adapt,) and then catch a bus to JFK, airport. Our flight to Johannesburg departs around noon.
• The flight lasts 15.5 hours
• We board a bus from Johannesburg to Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, which takes about 6 hours.
• After our first night in a hotel in Lesotho, we start PST (pre-service training.)
• We have morning classes, then meet our Basotho host families where we shall live for the first three months.
• Classes start at 7:30 a.m., and end at 5 p.m. Learning Sesotho, the language of Lesotho, is an important partof our PST. We also cover safety and the culture of Lesotho.
• Our host family teaches us how to bathe in a bucket, cook local foods, wash our clothes, as help us practice Sesotho.

Water is scarce and here’s what a Peace Corps volunteer wrote about his experience on the PC website.  (Read more on daily water usage in Lesotho.) —Peter Yurich, Ha Khayensti, Lesotho

“There isn’t much water available because we had a very dry winter and no rain this spring. I usually try to use only one to one and a half liters of water a day. This includes bathing, cooking, and cleaning dishes. Once a week I wash clothes, but try to use as little water as possible.

My day starts by boiling two liters of water. I use less than one liter to bathe; I drink two cups of coffee; and then I save the rest for cooking and cleaning dishes. If the tap is working, I may indulge myself by using a little more for bathing.

My host family uses a little more than I do because there are more people in the family. They use a wheelbarrow to carry two 10-liter buckets of water. Right now they use more water because they are making dung smear for the floor and walls of a new building. The building was constructed from rock and held together with a mud mixture that dried and became hard.”

I realize that I have to get used to changing my lifestyle, but when my family lived in Belize, in 2004-2005, water was also a problem. We had a cistern,and due to the lack of rain, we had to sponge bathe.

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