bye bye!

Cue the music. A fat lady? A funeral durst? That circus jingle that I hear in my head nearly every day? Nah. We'll go with an accordion. Cue "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" on the world's most out of place instrument.

It's down to leaving. Or returning? Of course it's both, but they imply two very different things. 'Leaving' seems as though it's sad or some sort of ending; 'returning' has more of a positive, pick-up-where-I-left-off sort of feel. Which category I place myself in depends heavily on the day I'm having: have I just returned from a great hike or taken a cold bucket bath? Are the women working away at the wool and mohair or did some guy just ask me for sex? All I know is that goodbyes have been really tough. The day I arrived in Ramabanta I brought snow with me (hence one of my names in Sesotho: 'mother of snow'); the morning I woke up to leave for the last time, I looked out to see snow on the mountains marking my farewell.

There's all these awful, blase phrases running through my brain about my experiences here. 'Life-changing', 'eye-opening', 'tough', 'beautiful'... I've spent two years writing letters and composing blogs by candle light for the world to read and I can't seem to come up with anything better for my finale. All these scattered, unorganized thoughts and feelings that I want to try to explain. I am so thankful that I've lived and worked in Lesotho (please, PLEASE if you love me at all, pronounce it correctly when we talk about it: "leh-soo-too"). Nothing will ever compare to the enormous challenge of trying to (and once in a while succeeding in) work here. My heart has broken along with my patience. I've crawled into my bed under a holey mosquito net at mid-day to escape the place I willingly crossed an ocean to call home. And I've let the shout of a toddler calling my name from across the village bring me back from that defeat. (I'm really not the same person I was 2 years ago, am I?)

The end (or denouement, thank you GRE) is meant to have finality and resolution. Tragedy, comedy, drama, thriller, or silly musical? We've go all the elements here in a tangled mess of a story. A three letter plague devastating the nation; a typical outfit of pink shorts, a 50 cent t-shirt and a cat hat worn by a taxi driver; a single mother barely putting her 2 daughters through school; dogs that laze around during the day and turn to packs of monsters at night; and a couple dancing the tango to an accordion. So does Casey come out of the mountain kingdom victorious or defeated? I'm not one for admitting defeat but I'd be a liar if I said I conquered PC, Lesotho, Ramabanta, or Fatima Mission. Lesotho ("leh-soo-too") hasn't really felt my presence - I've made no earth-shattering, newsworthy changes - but I've certainly felt Lesotho leave it's mark. Not just the scar on my leg from the run-in with an over-filled dump truck, either.

Not a single 60 seconds here has been easy. Maybe that's why a place that's made me twitch with anger is suddenly so hard to leave. When will a day of washing my underwear, baking bread and weeding my garden ever be so rewarding? My life comes down to a very basic existence. It's more than the lists and tallies I've kept, though I'm sure they say a good piece about my time here: 126 books read, 145 letters written, 6 flat tires, an unknown amount of miles hiked in/around Ramabanta, plus two years of journal entries, rides hitched with friendly strangers, hikes for a cell phone signal, skirts, and "give me sweets!" from little snots who know better. No, the truth, the summary of the final act is really just this: Lesotho has taught me to love two places, each with it's own set of qualities. Here, I've learned to live in each moment. It's a cliche, I know, but how else do I describe sitting on my porch with a cup of tea to watch the mountains go from green to purple to gray at sunset? The sharp smell of tomato plants on my hands as I pick the fruit for dinner? Visiting the women spinning wool and mohair just to sit and listen to the wheels oscillating, the carding cloth pull, the chatter of their voices? A thousand things I never really knew before Lesotho. And here I realized how much I love my home. My parent's house, perched next to the wood stove, Lake Michigan, the color of maple trees in the fall... trees in general, come to think of it.

"Find one word or phrase that describes Lesotho, Casey." First, find such a description for your home - something you'd tell someone who's never been there. Then, imagine your home has babies running around unsupervised without pants on, men who wear women's clothes (well) and think nothing of it, and women who wear dresses from material that looks like 20's wallpaper when they want to get decked out. It's never quiet but always peaceful. If you say "strange" it sounds like you don't really love it. If you say "beautiful" it seems dull. "Poor" is true, but not all of the story. "Absurd"? "Farcical"? "An impossible place"? Lesotho ("leh-soo-too") is a harsh, impossible place; absurd to a beautiful degree, senseless in it's intense extremes. Snowy mountains in Africa, a culture that is embarrassed at the sight of women's' thighs in pants but devastated by a disease passed during sex. It's a place of one culture, one way for doing any task, but has embraced Beyonce and Obama, shiny high heels and umbrellas with a passion. How do you not fall in love with that? How can you not look forward to leaving? And how do you explain why it's somehow such a magical, absurdly, senselessly, wonderful place?

I've called two places "home" in my life and both offer the sound of rain on a metal roof. Yet neither place has a permanent pull for me. So this is a story that ends as the heroine walks off (or maybe rides away on a donkey) to wander elsewhere. She's changed some, more she's learned about who she really is, and come to know two places infinitely more. Dim the lights (snuff candles). Cue orchestra (low, off-key wail on an accordion). Casey/Mosa bows out (two years in a skirt doesn't mean I've found the coordination to curtsy).

the b side

There's a list of things that I've sort of... omitted from the stories I tell here, in emails, in letters, and over the phone. I do this for only one reason: to keep mom and dad from freaking out. But I have less than 2 weeks remaining now and there are some truly fabulous gems that I feel possess entertaining qualities. Mostly they're funny and well-worth sharing for a smile. So here they are - the tales that the parents don't want to hear (you can stop now and never be the wiser, mama).

There have been two coup attempts in Lesotho. One when we first arrived in June of 2007 and one at the end of April this year. Neither were particularly serious or successful but I'm still quite thankful that Lesotho never makes national news. I can hear mom's voice on the phone if she'd seen the phrase "civil unrest in Lesotho" on the evening news. Good thing we don't rank with CNN. When we arrived in Maseru at 3am that very first night, we were greeted by army men with automatic weapons asking our bus driver why we were out past the 6 pm curfew. I myself had a similar thought, but it went more like: "What the #$%* am I doing here?" A few weeks later, a PC vehicle was stopped at road block and the car hijacked by ex-military men with guns. No injuries to any of the staff in the car, but all were rightfully shaken up. The more recent upheaval was less stressful, though for the Prime Minister who was the target of an assassination attempt probably less so. Still, we were at our COS conference in Maseru at the time and couldn't help noting the pattern - political unrest greets us as we arrive with 21 PCT's and also makes an appearance at our farewell when we're down to 15 PCV's. Does calling that funny solidify my lack of sensitivity?

More recently, I was heading up to Semongkong for my final trip to my second-favorite place in Lesotho. I found a lift up with Malineo as she was transporting 6 school kids for a field trip that weekend (6 school kids, one nun to supervise, a woman from the wool/mohair group to sell items at the lodge, a PCV... and a friggin' pigeon in a peach tree). So the three women smooshed into the cab and the lowly 6 children and Casey into the bed of the truck. It's a pickup from the 1980's but it has a cap on the bed making it perfectly legal as far as PC rules are concerned. Anyway, as we came into Semongkong we topped our last peak and started down. I was facing backwards but noticed an increasing worrisome speed followed by rocks flying out from our tires and a veering that made the cliff to our left rather precarious. (Ask me how many guardrails there are in Lesotho and I'll laugh in your face). Our brakes had gone out - which I only confirmed after we reached the bottom of the mountain (safely) and the boys had stopped screaming and making the sign of the cross over their hearts. You know it's bad when adolescent Basotho boys are praying.

There was the time that 4 boys, aged 16-19 (and heights all under 5"7'), decided Amber and I looked like an easy way to make some cash walking down a busy 4-lane road in Maseru. Amber is 6" even and I'm not exactly petite, so why they thought we appeared vulnerable is beyond me. Also, there was no way I was letting go of my bag when one demanded and grabbed it - my THIRD camera in Lesotho - which I'd owned for less than 3 weeks - was inside along with my passport and some cash. The best part of this story isn't me kicking said attacker in the kneecap (I couldn't punch else I'd lose my grip on said precious bag) or that we were less than 500 meters from the American Embassy (this would prove to be very unfortunate for the boys), but that when the short lad went at Amber she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, yelling: "What are you doing?!?!" Michigan girls are not easy score, boys. We did far more damage than they could have anticipated, right up to chasing them down and turning them over to the Embassy guards.

(You can stop reading at any time, mama.)

There's the outbreak of rabies in Semongkong dogs, the two times in SA that the group I was with was almost robbed but safety in numbers prevailed (again), the cop in Mozambique that we bribed to escape a traffic violation (turned out he was a fake cop after all that -- so irritating), that time in Joburg I flagged down a complete stranger and begged him to take me to my GRE testing site for any price after searching for the building for over an hour on foot, the first case of MDR-TB that appeared in Lesotho last year, the transportation riots a year ago that left a bus driver dead, and the day hike I took that landed me near a boys initiation school (or so I thought) leaving me no choice but to jump off a steep - though not vertical - cliff and run faster than I knew possible down a mountain until I felt safe enough to turn around... and realize I was mistaken. If you knew why crossing paths with such a group was so bad, you'd understand why I tumbled down a mountain to avoid one. And you'd tell me never to hike alone in Lesotho.

Of course, the journey isn't over just yet -- so maybe I'll have even more stories for mom and dad when they pick me up at the airport. Sparing any encounters with drunk bus drivers who drive off the road or sad tsotsi's with dull knives.

small world

Click on the link below to see a slideshow Walt Sutterlin put together on his book drive for our local library at Fatima Primary. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the picture of the library for the video to start.

http://www.sutterlearn.com/gallery3.html

Preparing to leave - I'm cleaning out piles of old paperwork (stacks of paper are surprisingly tricky to burn in large quantities), putting things into boxes for "send home", "sell", "give away", etc. I have a large box of letters I've received - 2 years worth - and before I can think about it too hard I toss it in the "BURN" box and march outside with a box of matches. Any delay and the rest of my week would have been spent pouring over old letters in sticky nostalgia.

I find photos I printed long ago and make piles of things I need to distribute around Ramabanta. For Masekhampu, I have pics of us making the orphan's garden (that project flopped...) and her and her "Under 5" class for a library thank you (another bust, I moved the library up to the primary school). Ah, memories. So I head down the hill to her house, a nice rondaval with aloe plants neatly landscaped and the tidy swept dirt around her small compound. The word "Jesus" is written over her door, a good preview to the only thing she ever talks about. I had the pictures over and she asks, as everyone seems to lately, "When are you leaving?" Then, to my reply, "So early!" I know it's her command of English that leads to her word choice, but I can't help pointing out that two years doesn't feel "early". "Yes, and you are still with us, you are still alive." Ah, Basotho optimism. "And you have tried many things and ---" Here, she uses my favorite hand signal; arms out and palms up in the air as if to say "not here". It means any one of the following things: Doesn't/didn't work (as Masekhampu was indicating); I don't have; there isn't any; I don't know; it/he/she/they never came; I don't understand you; no money. The versatility of this gesture means that I use it often and I'm always grammatically correct.

The women of Tsohang Basotho tell me they're going to knit me wool clothing for my "journey" home. A sweater, hat, and scarf. And it's cold, too, so I'll need them to keep me warm. Plus food, because "it is too far!" I've told them my home is very cold in winter and forgot to mention the flip in seasons when you cross the equator (or feel overwhelmed at attempting this explanation; it does seem complicated when I look at it from their perspective). So now I'll arrive at Detroit Metro (in July) in full woolen clothing (and a skirt, obviously) with chicken, papa, a Basotho hat and blanket, and, if Mathapelo has her way, her son as my brand new hubby - who will propose once he reaches the age of 18 in, oh, 14 years.

(Felipe, my arranged husband)

But first, every woman in my village must succeed in fattening me up. Else my mother will think I wasn't well cared for here. Heaven forbid I go home anything less than rotund...

(local boys and their hand-made wire cars)

My belongings are fair play in most people's minds. Though, I must say, previous PCV's in Ramabanta must have exercised restraint in handing things out before they left because I don't get as many requests/demands as I expected. So while several times a week I hear the phrase "When you leave, you will give me ______?" I have to protest, "I need to wear a pair of shoes home, guys. No, I'll be using my cell phone." It's so tempting to simply throw pots to one person, clothes to another. But I know it makes a big problem even bigger. The handout mentality is so pervasive in this culture. So "No - I'm selling things. You can come buy them before I leave." I'll make a few rand, enough to buy a night or two of lodging when I travel, but at least it'll put a value on things and maybe help the next PCV - when ever he or she may come - to keep their sanity.

That's a source of confusion, too. For more than a decade there's been one PCV after another. But not this time? The point of PC isn't to keep a steady supply of Americans in a village. In fact, if people are saying "who's next?" then there's a problem. So it's time for a break, time for the people of Ha Ramabanta to try and get things done on their own, to keep some of these projects going without outside help, grants, direction, encouragement. It's one of those 'tough love' things that's hard to execute - or take, for that matter.

Of course, the hardest people to say 'so long' to are the ones that don't get it. Rapolang and Felipe (my future husband) simply look at me and grin when I try to explain that soon, I'm going home. I can hear what they're thinking: "What's that crazy white girl on about this time?" They ask for crayons to draw instead. "But the white people will still come?" *sigh* Yeah, the tourists will still come. "And the tu-tu-tu?" Tu-tu-tu are the motor bikes that South Africans ride around on here on the weekends. So yes, and the tu-tu-tu, too. Then they start arguing over who I'll give the crayons to when I leave. Felipe is my husband-to-be so it seems only fair that Rapolang keeps them as a consolation prize. I simply raise my arms, palms up, and shrug. This seems to take care of the debate.

(my neighbors made drums a few days ago and played a concert for anyone who drifted by. lots of dancing immediately began).

(that's my man, cuttin' a rug)

42 Days

It's a slap in the face to realize a moment you've waited for for two years is suddenly coming up at you like the ground in free fall. Not that every day was a countdown to my last day here but some days certainly were. Enough of them that I suddenly feel a pang of guilt towards Lesotho.
I'd been away from site for almost a month. Between the GRE, vacation, COS conference and an HIV/AIDS Committee meeting, I was ready to start walking back to Ramabanta on Saturday morning when it was finally all done and over. Al graciously agreed to chop off about 8 inches of my hair (my first haircut in two years) and feeling lighter I ran to the taxi rank to begin the adventure that is getting home.


I thought it quite lucky that the taxi was nearly full, guaranteeing a speedy departure time as soon as we had all the seats occupied. Unfortunately, everyone else had lots of belongings with them just as I did, so it was more crowded than usual. Not just the bags of maize meal and cabbage heads but also an impressive number of babies on laps, suitcases at our feet and even a mattress. All inside our "mini bus" (passenger van). So my large backpack, my large grocery back of paperwork, clothes, shoes, and towel, and my shoulder bag (or "purse", I suppose) all ended up on my lap. 'At least it's cloudy and cool today,' I thought, 'Not too hot in here.' As the conductor jumped in and slammed the door closed behind him I panicked to realize that in the month of living out of my backpack I'd repacked so many times I had no clue where my earplugs were. Not that I could have reached them anyway, as tightly packed in as we were... The taxi may have had a driver's side door that only opened from the inside and considerable trouble getting out of first gear, but the sounds system was top notch and speaker conveniently located directly about my head.

I spent two hours with my fingers in my ears. I swear I'll never look at an accordion again without experiencing heart palpitations and war time-like flashbacks.

But as soon as I got off the taxi two hours later I felt calm and elated. A few kids playing on the school soccer field called my name. My house has never felt so serene to walk into. I put on a scarf and sweatshirt in acknowledgement of the chilly fall weather and went to say hello to Malineo. She was thrilled to see me back and told me people had been asking if I'd left for good - she knew better. When my two favorite toddlers greeted me I literally ran to pick them up and hug them. People's smiles and greetings felt so genuine. The mountains are turning brown - again - to announce my second fall here. Why was I returning home from a three day conference on leaving Lesotho and finishing my PC service and feeling more at home and comfortable than ever before?

Six weeks to go and I suddenly feel like a traitor. I'm meant to be boxing up belongings and purging old paperwork and selling pots and pans; half of me is ecstatic and half, suddenly and without warning, heartbroken.

Namibia

It was April Fool's Day when I took the GRE (my scores are somewhere between a joke and a laugh) and April 2nd when Jenny arrived in Joburg and we flew to Windhoek, Namibia. I didn't understand everything that the Air Namibia folks were saying that the check-in counter but "standby" wasn't in Zulu. Ten minutes later they smiled and said (in English): "Thanks for being so patient. Economy is overbooked but we put you two in Business Class. Have a nice flight." And that we did. I have never flown first class and probably never will again, but it was quite swanky.

We spent less than 24 hours in Windhoek before taking our rental car (whom we named Lance, the best name we could come up with for a white frat-boy way out of place on our safari-ish trip) south to Sessriem and Soussesvlei. The dry, arid landscape turned from sparse vegetation to desert dunes as we traveled along sandy roads. We arrived and set up camp under an acacia tree and bought beers just in time to watch a spectacular sunset and chat with a group of locals who had just gotten off work at a nearby lodge.

The next morning we were up before dawn to pack up our tent (a very tiny two-man) and drive into the national park. There was nothing to see as we drove through the pre-dawn hours and parked 45 km later at an arbitrary sand dune named "dune 45". Up we climbed as the light slowly faded in. And we were greeted with one of the most breathtaking sights -- blood-red dunes all around that turned purple when the sun broke the horizon. Stunning. We drove a little farther on and stopped to hike out to a "vlei" (salt pan that is sporadically filled with water when it actually rains) before driving out and heading north to Swakopmund, a seaside city in the middle of - you guessed it - a desert.

I couldn't get over it. Sand dunes and nothingness and then this huge, resort-style city like you would see in Florida or the Carolina's. Super touristy and wealthy but still worth seeing. We took two nights there, camping at a backpackers hostel, and on the second day Jenny went sand boarding on the dunes. I played around taking pictures and trying not to burn my feet in the incredibly hot sand - the sand temps were cooler up high where there was a breeze, but down below they measured it at 70 degrees C. That's 158 degrees F. I was sure my cheap flip flops were melting.

Then the real fun began. Our plan was to drive north to Opuwo and stay with two PCV's for a few nights. There were several options for routes and, being adventurous and possibly a bit ambitious, we chose 'the road less traveled.' Oh man...

This included driving the Skeleton Coast. So named because of the shipwrecks along that section of coastline that doomed any surviving sailors. Before we entered the park we crossed a set of gates (with skull and crossbones) where the ranger told us only 4x4 vehicles could make it. Then he changed his mind and said we'd just have to gun the accelerator through a dry riverbed. Lance made it, though the undercarriage was worse for the wear. We would continue driving the Toyota corolla as if it was four wheel drive for the remainder of the trip.

The Skeleton Coast: No plants, no animals, no water for hundreds of kilometers. And Jenny and I both fell completely silent for more than an hour as I drove. The feeling of the place was completely desolate and depressing. I have never in my life felt as though I was trespassing on a place but this section of coastline is a place no person is meant to visit. It simply felt wrong in the pit of my stomach. And after we came out of it heading east and began to see a few shrubs and eventually ostriches Jenny and I both started to speak again and had the same feeling of having tempted fate. We knew that somehow we'd gone somewhere we shouldn't have and it would catch up with us eventually.

We had no clue how comically this would come about. We kept heading north-ish. And then we came across a river that wasn't dry. Jenny got out and checked the water depth, shrugged and we went for it. Once across we had a look at our map and realized that we'd just crossed the smallest of the upcoming rivers (no bridges to be found). As we debated continuing on or going back 15 km to take a longer, paved route, one of the PCV's we were to stay with that night texted me to ask about our route. Then again to say "Do you have a 4x4?" We laughed at the timing of this and drove back across the river a second time (successfuly), backtracked, and made it to a small town to refuel before heading to Opuwo at sunset. The people at the fueling station warned us about animals in the road at night and we thanked them as we drove on, thinking if we can handle MI driving at night with deer everywhere that Namibia couldn't be much worse.

WRONG. There's no fences in the north. And no shepherds. But cattle everywhere. And they seem to like the tar road in the evenings. They don't even run when cars approach. You can tell where this is headed...

Lance took that cow out. Actually, the cow was fine and ran off and Lance was even driveable... but he looked awful. We made it to Opuwo late because I drove aproximately 60km/hr to avoid hitting another cow. Ed's first words when he saw us pull in were: "Holy Sh#t." (Not "Holy Cow" ??) Anyway, to make a long, funny story short, we convinced the rental company that the car was in fact driveable and that we should be allowed to keep the car for a few days longer before returning it early. And after a police report to document the event (a story in itself) we were able to enjoy the cultural diversity of Opuwo town and wander the streets laughing. A mixing pot of 4 or 5 tribes including the famous Himba, I was so thrilled for the diversity and culture.

From there we headed to Etosha National Park. Every park worker we encountered stopped us to ask what we'd hit with our car. A kudu? A rhino? No, not one of the park animals. "It was a cow" became a catch phrase for the remainder of the trip.

Etosha was fantastic. So many animals - we even spotted lions and then rhinos at the watering hole at night. Jenny and I were in heaven. But after two days of being in a park where you're not allowed out of your car except in designated camping areas we were going stir-crazy. So we left the park and, having decided to cancel our trip to Victoria Falls after the cow encounter, we headed to Waterberg Plateau Park for a few days to hike and camp and relax.

And then to Windhoek to drop of the car. Again, a story in itself because I had to fill out another accident report than included drawing the scene of the accident. People have since pointed out that the cow looks like a stick figure ant... you laugh or you cry.

Our vacay ended with three nights in Windhoek for which we mostly sat around, ate, and drank. It's not a culturally diverse and there's not much to do except, well, eat, drink and sit around. Still, we managed to make it entertaining and very relaxing and sampled game meet at a local restaurant one night. The same restaurant also had Guiness on the menu.

THE END.

CHANGE

Small good deeds add up. And when I made a simple request for "a few books" from home, I never imagined such a response. Already I have books from mom & dad, Jennie Sterkenburg, Sandy, Nancy, and the Aqualinas; now 11 more boxes are on the way from a group of elementary school kids in Michigan. (I guess I'll have to devise a method for getting said books from Maseru to my village, eh? good thing that I love both adventures and challenges...) Read the LSJ article below (scroll to the second article titled "Paying the Freight") for more. And you have to understand that I've never met the teacher who organized this book drive but that he's received my request third hand and responded loudly. Know that I'm so amazed and honored by the incredible people supporting me from so far away.

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200903200400/COLUMNISTS09/903200322

Our new president has called for service -- you guys have shown that we can answer this call. THANK YOU.