After
re-reading my last post, saying, “much has happened” in Lesotho is a grand
understatement. I often find it
hard to comprehend where I am, what I’m doing, and who I’ve become. As cliché as it may sound sometimes I
feel I should pinch myself to be sure I’m not dreaming. It’s unfortunate, but I
simply cannot describe every single detail that has happened since I’ve
arrived, not only in this blog but also even to myself. Maybe many years later
I’ll understand this crazy experience I now call life…
But,
as promised, here is the (long-awaited) sequel of my third blog post: Maseru I love you, Part Deux, now re-named The Pursuit of Happiness. It will be a
countdown of my three favorite days so far out of the month and some change
that I’ve been in Southern Africa.
3. Team-Building Day
The
second week of work, on a Friday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a team-building
day for all of the Kick4Life coaches. First, a little background information:
Kick4Life coaches are not actual soccer coaches, well of course some of them
are, but that’s not what I’m referring to. What we define as a coach is a
Basotho youth, usually between the ages of 18 and 25 who will go to different
schools in Lesotho and deliver our HIV curriculum. The reason we use the term
coach and not teacher is because teacher has a boring and, sometimes, negative
connotation, especially in Africa.
Schooling here is very much memorization and recital; teachers are
allowed to hit students and also have the authority to expel students for issues
as ridiculous as not having proper dress shoes for school. We have about 50 coaches in total at
Kick4Life and they teach at different schools across three different districts:
Maseru, Barea, and Leribe.
Now
back to my story… The team-building event for the coaches was held in Barea at
a youth center. All of the Maseru coaches, curriculum staff, a German volunteer
named Sophie, and myself met at the Kick4Life office at 8:00 AM with the
intention of departing for Barea by 8:30 AM (Barea is about half an hour away,
and the event started at 9:30 AM).
But typical of African nature, we didn’t depart until 9:30 AM. The
coaches took a taxi to the site, which is actually more like a chromed out mini
bus with decals, vuvuzelas, (remember the loud noise from the World Cup two
years ago?), and blacked out windows. The rest of the staff, unfortunately, had
to ride in a van that has no stereo, which shortly turned out to be a benefit,
at least in my opinion. Along the
way we picked up four other female K4L coaches at a bus stop and we were
finally on our way to Barea. This
had been the first time I got to travel outside of Maseru and see the Lesotho
countryside. It’s breathtaking; very much like the southwest of the
States. Shortly after our
hitchhiker coaches realized we had no radio they began singing gospel hymns and
traditional Lesotho songs (side note: Catholicism has a strong presence in
Lesotho). It was beautiful. I’ve never been one for gospel
music, or religion for that matter, but the harmony and rhythm of these girls
was blissful. This was a moment to
pinch myself…
We
arrived at the youth center a tad bit late and the activities had already begun.
Sophie and I, keeping in mind we were the only Caucasians in attendance, were
immediately thrown into a huge circle of coaches who were playing different
singing and dancing games. As any
westerner should in this situation, we both hopped in to the delight of all the
coaches. After playing these games for about half an hour it was on to more
signing and dancing. Although this
time it was a bit more organized and familiar—at least it was more familiar for
me, Sophie still had no clue what was happening. We formed three long,
horizontal lines parallel to each other to do a dance. The first dance was to
R. Kelly’s World’s Greatest, where
all of the coaches did interpretive movements to the lyrics of the Chorus. I’m
not a fan of R. Kelly, and I used to find the song lame, but the coaches loved
it and really got into it. It felt
as though they deeply believed they were the world’s greatest, and I was convinced
as well. Now whenever I here that
song, instead of changing it, I’ll turn the volume to max, sing along, and
remember that day when I felt I was the world’s greatest as well… The second song we danced to was DJ
Casper’s Cha Cha Slide, an old
favorite of mine from high school homecoming (shout out to Camp Hill High
School Class of ’07)! Many of the coaches were less familiar with this song,
and I seized the opportunity to show them how it’s done, a nice swap of roles.
Eventually everyone caught on and the dance was organized again. I mean it’s
not a tough song to dance to, the lyrics literally tell you what to do. Except
when it came to “Charlie Brown”: apparently his dance from the Peanuts cartoon hadn’t caught on like
Soulja Boy had in Lesotho…
After
dancing around for a while it was on to more team-building events, and Sophie
and I became casual observers, helping out where we could. One activity that I got to help a lot
in was a metaphorical interpretation of the Coach’s hopes and dreams (sorry, didn’t
quite remember the name for this activity). The coaches were split into different groups and each group
was given an egg, which represented their dreams. The idea was to love the egg by making up an impromptu dance
and song for it, and then to cushion it in any way possible by wrapping it in
some protection (e.g. clothing items, grass, bags, etc.). My main mission was to climb a tree and
become the metaphorical destroyer of dreams. Awesome. Here I am, white guy, surrounded by Basotho I had
just met, and my job was to throw, not drop, the eggs (their hopes and dreams)
from the top of the tree with the intention of crushing them. Well, that seemed
counterproductive to why I came to Africa. But the activity went great. The groups would dance and sing their way up to the tree
where I was (remember, all of these dances and songs were made up on the spot
and they were INCREDIBLE), hand their enveloped egg to me, ask me kindly to be
gentle, and I would heave them downwards.
I had an inspirational performance and successfully crushed 5 out of 7
eggs. At the end of the activity,
I was forever nicknamed “egg-crusher” (originality at it’s best).
Earlier
in the day I had met a local boy, aged 5, at the center named Saleem, who had
to be the cutest kid I’d ever seen. Of course I say that about all African
kids, because ask anyone who’s been here; they ARE the cutest kids you’ll ever
see. I met him while he was unsuccessfully trying to play basketball on a regulation-sized
hoop. In between activities where I wasn’t needed I would help Saleem dunk on
the hoop, and then destroy him repeatedly in one-on-one (sorry buddy, you mess
with the bull and you get the horns).
Saleem, regardless of our one-sided basketball game, became something
like a younger brother to me for the day. When I was crushing eggs, he climbed
the tree with me, just to hang out. He even volunteered his torn and tattered
sweater to further protect one group’s egg. At other activities, he was never far away, smiling, giggling,
and asking me if he could lend a (tiny) hand. This kid made the day truly
special for me. Not because he looked up to me, or because he would let me kill
him in basketball, but because he was the definition of happiness.
Later in the evening we had a huge braai for all of the
coaches, and Saleem tagged along so I gave him a plate to eat, then my plate,
and also a third. It was about this time I started to think he probably hadn’t
eaten in quite a while. A few of
his friends, all probably street kids as well, came running over once they saw
me give him food. I gave them each a plate, but unfortunately there wasn’t any
more food to go around. All of the kids then walked over to the trashcans and
starting eating other people’s leftovers, or putting them in dirty bags to save
for later. Then it was confirmed: none of them had any idea where their next
meal would come from. It was a very crushing feeling for me to witness, but I
wasn’t saddened. All of these kids were happy, at least for a day, and never
stopped smiling, especially Saleem…
After the braai we had a dance
party, and even the kids joined in to everyone’s delight. Sadly after this it
was time to go home. I said my goodbyes to Saleem and his friends. I told
Saleem that if he’s ever in Maseru to come see me at the Kick4Life
headquarters, but I know I’ll probably never see him again. It doesn’t make me
sad, but only grateful to have met him and witnessed what true happiness is,
even when you can’t do something as simple as eat…
2. Move-In Day
The
next Friday was the longest, but most rewarding workday I’ve had thus far. As I explained in a previous post, the
participants in our ReCYCLE program can use their money to either pay for
school tuition, driving school tuition, food, or shelter. I say shelter and not
housing because shelter is basic: it’s a necessity and not a luxury, which is a
lesson I came to appreciate at the end of this day....
One
of my ReCYCLE boys, Boithabiso, had been living on the streets for a while but
dedicated himself to finding a home.
He would show up every day that we collect recycling, a success in
itself, and also came on days when he wouldn’t earn points just to help out and
hang. Eventually he ended up
saving around R2000.00, which is an amazing accomplishment considering the
maximum they can earn every week is R70.00. Do the math. That’s about 28 weeks
of work, at least 7 months of living on the street…
Finally
the week had come that he could rent a home for 3 months, buy a few household
necessities, and spend whatever he had left on food. In the days leading up to that Friday, one of my co-workers,
Lollipop, which is a nickname not an actual name, dedicated much of her time to
finding him a home to rent. I wanted to help as much as possible, but not
speaking Sesotho fluently is a dilemma, especially when negotiating the costs
of rent; so I let Lollipop take the reins and I lent myself wherever possible.
On Tuesday of that week we thought
we had finally found him a home, in a village about ten minutes outside of
Maseru. Lollipop, Boithabiso, a few of the other recycling boys, and myself
(relegated to van driver), ventured off early Tuesday afternoon to go and pay
the rent for three months and retrieve the key to his home. When we arrived the
landlord informed us that he had already rented the place to someone else. A
simple informative phone call would’ve been nice, but then again, TIA. We didn’t leave just yet. Luckily, Lollipop had worked her magic
and was already in contact with two other landlords about potential homes to
rent within the same village. We arrived at the second home, and the landlord
informed us that the home was still up for rent. Woo! Everyone was elated, until we saw the condition of the
home. The floor was littered with ants, the ceiling had multiple cracks, and
the window was shattered, but still had the metal caging intact. However, none
of these dilemmas constituted a reason to not rent the home. The reason we
couldn’t rent the home was because there was no door. It was literally just an
opening in a wall that was the entry/exit into the home. This couldn’t jive because
Boithabiso would 1) Freeze at night and 2) be robbed immediately. Two homes
down, one to go. We jetted over to the third home and were met with similar disappointment.
The landlord of this home informed us that she would not rent to Boithabiso
because the previous tenants had robbed her and her family. We were 0/3 in one
day, and back to square one.
The
next day at the office a different co-worker of mine, who is the head of our
OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) program informed us that she had been in
contact with Boithabiso’s family, and he would be moving back in with them.
(Just a side-note: technically the ReCYCLE program is a Social Enterprise
project, but it does fall under the OVC program as well since most of my boys
are OVCs. Part of the OVC program
is to help kids get back in touch with their families and help them move back
home and off of the street).
Boithabiso isn’t necessarily a child though. He’s 22, an adult, and hasn’t lived at home for months. But if
it meant having shelter over his head he would obviously agree to try it out.
The program director told him to be at the K4L office at 9:00 AM on Thursday,
and she would bring him home. Boithabiso showed up at 8:45 AM. Eventually 4:00
PM rolled around, one hour before quitting time, and the OVC director informed
him he would not be going home that day because it’s too late in the work day.
Bullshit! Lollipop explained to me that Boithabiso was, rightfully so, very
upset with K4L and had lost trust in us.
She said he was inconsolable and wouldn’t talk to anyone. He had worked
his ass off for 7 months so that he could sleep somewhere with an actual roof,
and four separate times in two days he’d been let down. On top of this, he still had to spend
his nights on the street. Immediately
we started looking for a home somewhere, anywhere that he could rent. But,
regrettably, we found nothing.
The
next day, now Friday, one of my recycling boys, Mpho, a close friend of
Boithabiso, came and found Lollipop early in the morning and informed him that
he found a home for Boithabiso. Mpho made a verbal agreement with the landlord
that we would be there Friday by end of day, or she could rent the house to
someone else. This was all we needed to hear, and early that afternoon,
Lollipop and I took Boithabiso around Maseru to the grocery store for basic
food supplies, a gas primer stove to cook his food, and very basic house-hold
necessities (blanket, comforter, and sleeping pad). My supervisor had already given some of his own old
silverware, pots, and pans, thank god, because all of his money had been spent
minus what we saved to pay for rent.
We had placed all of our chips down on this hand. We had to. It had to work, or else
Boithabiso would take all of his new belongings back on the street where he’d
be mugged for them. Around 6 PM we
finished buying necessities and were heading off to the village outside of
Maseru. The sun was going down, and not one of us, Lollipop, Boithabiso, or
myself knew how to get to the landlord’s home. The only one who knew where the
landlord stayed was Mpho, whom we hoped we could collect at his house in order
to show us where to go. To me, a
westerner, who is used to having an iPhone with Google maps, this seemed
desperate and unlikely to work. There are no addresses in Lesotho, only landmarks. The odds
of us finding Mpho’s home, in this village that none of us were familiar with,
in the dark, without street signs or streets for that matter, seemed very long. Also, it isn’t wise to travel around
villages at night, especially in a car with valuables. But I had a tough time
showing any negativity, when Boithabiso, crammed in the back of the van with
his new luxuries, could only show positivity.
We turned up a hill that we
believed led to the village, and, truly miraculously, we found Mpho walking
down the side of the road with a friend. I can’t say it enough: one should
never believe in coincidences. We
slammed on the breaks, whistled him down, and he hopped in the van to show us
where to go. After about another
fifteen minutes of driving down dirt “roads” we found the home, paid the
landlord, retrieved the key, and unloaded the van. By now it was about 9 PM. After days and days of failing, in
a matter of minutes, we succeeded. The home was a one-room place with concrete
floors, concrete walls, and one window. There was no electricity, no toilet, no
shower, and no furnishings. It was
smaller than my college dorm-room. But it was a home none-the-less (with a door as well), and
Boithabiso couldn’t hide his elation. He had a place to sleep, to make food,
and most importantly, a place to call his.
I couldn’t hide my happiness
either. Like a disease, happiness is contagious. But unlike a disease it doesn’t result from poverty, violence,
or desperation. It comes from the
soul and true happiness can’t be killed. It can only be spread.
1. Happiness Found
As much as I loved both of these
days at work, as I said in part I of this post,
it’s always better to relax. The first time I got to truly
relax was also my first time I got to do some traveling around South
Africa. A few of my fellow GRS
interns and I decided it was high time we had a semi-reunion, so we all jetted
from our respective homes to Johannesburg (Jozi) for a weekend, and, specifically,
a Kaiser Chiefs game. The Kaiser
Chiefs are one of the professional soccer teams in Jozi, and are similar in
popularity (amongst South Africans) to a team like Manchester United. I left
work on a Friday afternoon (hmm, every one of these days have been a Friday,
but alas there are never any coincidences) around 1:00 PM and walked down to
the Lesotho/South African border. Maseru resides directly on the border, and my
house is only a ten minute walk to the border. My plan was to grab a taxi (chromed out, tinted, vuvuzella
bearing mini-bus) from the border of Lesotho to Bloemfontein, where I was to
meet two other GRS interns who drove a car from Kimberly. Taxi service from
city to city is quite hilarious. It costs about R80 ($10.00) and basically you
show up whenever you want, because there are no set times for the taxi to
leave. The only downside to this
is that no taxi will leave until the entire cabin is full. So you can be the first on the taxi,
grab shotgun and have to wait five hours to leave, or you can be the last on
the taxi, get thrown in the trunk and leave immediately. Fortunately I only had to wait about 2
hours for the taxi to fill to capacity, I landed a pretty decent seat, and was
now off to Bloem. Once in Bloem, I
quickly realized my mobile phone no longer worked and so there was no way to
contact my fellow interns. Eventually a nice man let me use his phone for 2
Rand, and I called my friends, who were about two hours away. Well by now it
was getting dark, and I didn’t want to be a westerner on the streets of Bloem
with a huge backpacker’s pack full of valuables. So naturally I ducked into a bar to wait and enjoyed a few
drinks with some local company.
Eventually I met up with my friends and we were off on the 4-hour drive
to Jozi. The drive there was a
typical road trip, except better.
There is literally NO light pollution across the countryside, so it makes
for an incredible view of the stars, which was definitely a highlight of the
drive.
Finally
we touched down in Jozi and the reunion amongst interns began. It was myself,
the Kimberly interns, the Jozi interns, and a handful of the Cape Town
interns. It felt like seeing old
family I hadn’t for years, except we all had only known each other for about four
days from our orientation a month ago (again credit to GRS for the family atmosphere).
We spent the night in the Jozi intern apartment since the next night we would
be attending the Kaiser Chiefs game at Soccer City Stadium, the World Cup
Finals stadium from two years ago…
We
packed into two cars like true South Africans and made the uncomfortable, but
highly enjoyable, trek to the stadium. Once we arrived we immediately started tail
gaiting with the locals. Unfortunately we lost track of time, as twenty-something-year-olds
will do while tailgating, and missed the first fifteen minutes of the
game. Outside of the stadium we
were attempting to scalp tickets for our large group, but weren’t having any
success until a tall man in a security outfit came forward. He claimed, to which 100% of us called
bullshit, that he could get us all into the stadium for R30 each ($4.00)
without having to give us tickets.
After arguing for a bit, and telling him we thought he was a full of it,
he agreed to only accept payment once we were in our seats. Well now not one of
us has ever met a scalper who would agree to these terms, and most likely will
never meet another, so we took the chance. Sure as rain he delivered. He walked every single one of us through the gates and to
“our” seats, which were about ten rows up from the field. UNREAL. We kindly
paid the man.
The
game was already 20 minutes in by this point, Kaiser Chiefs were up 2-0, and
the home fans were going NUTS. The culture of the vuvuzella hasn’t yet died, and
I’m positive it never will. People were dancing, shouting, celebrating, etc. We
all joined in and even some of the other interns left our seats to go wild with
the hardcore supporters group.
After about ten minutes, something very peculiar happened. All
of the supporters led a mass exodus from the seats and into the corridors of
the stadium. Initially we had no
idea what was happening. Is it a fan celebration? Did something horrible happen
in another section? Is it the apocalypse? Well it turned out to be something
more like the apocalypse. All of a
sudden the sky opened up, and rain started pouring down so we all ran into the
corridors as well. Then the lightning and thunder followed, and eventually a
massive hailstorm joined the party. The balls of Hail were about the size of peas,
and immediately covered the field.
The players left the pitch and returned to their locker rooms for a
brief intermission while the inclement weather passed.
But it never passed. Some of us were pretty upset that we
would miss the game, despite only paying R30 for it. But as we were told we would have to do at our GRS
orientation a month before, we expected the unexpected and adapted. We ALL rushed the field. There were already two or three fans
running around on the hail covered grass trying to evade security, but soon
security would have to deal with about 200 fans doing the same. Rushing the field felt like something
you’ve always wanted to do but never had the balls to actually do it. Running down the steps and hopping the
barrier was such an adrenaline rush in itself that we just had to keep
running. So we did: all around the field and amongst all of
the Kaiser Chiefs supporters. We
were yelling, dancing, singing, laughing, and falling. Then a snowball fight broke out (the
pieces of hail combined with the rain made it easy to pack). It was like something out of a movie. Here we were, all from half a
world away, seeing each other for the first time in a month, running around on
the WORLD CUP FINALS FIELD. It was
such an uplifting and amazing feeling, and one I will never forget. It’s very hard to put into words how happy we all were,
running around like idiots in a hail and lightning storm in the middle of a
professional soccer match in South Africa. But I think the best moments in life are the ones you can’t
describe. All you can do is
smile. Maybe it was the feeling of
freedom, or the feeling of compassion and contentment amongst complete
strangers. I don’t know. But what I do know is that for 15
minutes I shared something very special, something few experience, not only
with my close friends, but also with every single person on that field.
Watch this space next week for an entire blog entry
dedicated solely to pictures I’ve taken thus far.
Sharp,
Shane
Photo Courtesy of Barrett Martin (http://bareinafrica.revotheory.com/)
