Culture Festival

St.Theresa Secondary school had a wonderful cultural celebration. James and I attended the day long celebration to support our students and experience more of Basotho culture. The students spent most of the morning dancing and singing in their beautiful colorful clothing and traditional wool blankets. In the afternoon we ate platefuls of traditional Basotho food.

It was awesome watching the culture dances with a backdrop of mountains and clouds Basotho diet primarily consists Papa (maize meal), Moroho (cooked cabbage), Nama (meat), Mokopu (pumpkin) and the drink Motoho (a fermented sorghum drink). Then there were a few huge buckets full of joala (booze made from fermented sorghum or corn). They also slaughtered a cow so we had beef with all of our sides. Everything was eaten without silverware and about 50 of us passed around a wet dishcloth to "clean" our hands. It was a fun day and I took a lot of photos and videos to share when I return back to the states.

Keyhole Gardens

I've been working with village health workers and members of HIV support groups recently to talk about Keyhole Gardens and nutrition for HIV+ folks. Keyhole gardens are circular raised beds that are constructed right outside the door (close, easy to maintain & water). There are many organic layers of grass, manure and soil in the garden creating a small but healthy soil soup of nutrients. Ideally throughout the year these gardens can be an overflowing feast of vegetables. Keyhole gardens also have a "keyhole" constructed of sticks, grass and manure where "gray water" can be dumped. Culturally its not normal to use gray water on your food for Basotho, in an area where water isn't always available, its important to save every drop of water.

These workshops over the last month have been very successful for me and my role here as a Peace Corp volunteer. In reality I haven't "done" a lot, I didn't teach hardly at all at any of the workshops. My role for these workshops was to connect resources together especially with the local HIV extension workers, the community council and the Ministry of Agriculture farmers extension officers. I primarily met with the motivated extension officers talked together about what we thought should be introduced, made some colorful flipcharts & posters and they presented and organized everything. Over the few weeks that these workshops went on, about 70 health workers & support group members from 45 villages received training that they might not have received if I wasn't there to give a little encouragement and "push". Now my hope is for each village health worker and support group member to go back to their remote mountainous villages and teach and build workshops in their own communities. Next week I'll be working with a support group in my own village to construct 8 keyhole gardens for HIV+ folks &/or orphans and using seeds that were donated from home to help motivate.

Changes of Season

I walk past this tree and group of Aloe plants every day. Its just down the "road" from my house. I haven't taken a photo of it with snow yet, but will next year.