1993

Hmm. Other than a few little snippets (which I am trying to track down and make into larger tales and will thus have to be postponed until next issue), you all have left me in the dark. Your penance? More information about me. You'll see before too long that I really wasn't kidding about this tactic. Either you let me bore you to tears with my life, or you tell me about yours.

Life in a one-room rondaval in Lesotho's mountains has been pretty good so far. First of all, its Le-soo-too and its a tiny country completely surrounded by South Africa. Despite being tiny, it takes forever to get from place to place. The roads, so to speak, are a bit frightening. Although my town of Thaba Tseka lies only 170 kilometers from the capitol city, Maseru, its at least a four-hour trip, or so I've been told. My personal best is closer to five hours. Along the way we run through obstacles ranging from the prosaic —potholes, wet roadbeds (two-thirds of the way to Maseru we get tarmac) and stones—to the slightly more exotic—herds of cattle, donkeys carrying sides of beef, wildly hurtling private cars and taxis. This isn't the Africa you imagine. No lions, elephants or zebra. Supposedly some of the more remote areas harbor packs of baboons and small herds of antelope. We've yet to see that.

Rondaval living hasn't been as much of crunch as I feared. There are certainly times when a 20-foot diameter is just not room enough for kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, dining room, laundry room, study, foyer and two people. But for the most part the pinched quarters are working out just fine.

Our work—both my wife and I are education volunteers—has had its ups and downs. We sort of take turns offering success stories and nightmares. One day it's the drunken education minister making his visit. The next it's a break-through with cooperative learning or incorpo- rating games into class. Then right away we're back to corporal punishment or the simple reality of more than 50 students for each teacher at my wife's school. My school is struggling due to lack of enrollment and fighting just to stay open.

Being somewhat remote and perched at nearly 7,000 feet, fresh vegetables are quite scarce. Naturally, we turn to what every resourceful Peace Corps volunteer does—start a garden. Unfortunately, this works for only half of a year—winter being what it is. And being in the Southern Hemisphere, winter is upon us. The next step was to construct a greenhouse-type cover, built out of scavenged parts and salvaged plastic. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and around our garden copycat greenhouses, exact scaled models of my garden, have popped up. Agriculture officials asking for advice and tips have even approached me. I'll call that success No. 1, especially if it does end up guaranteeing even a small supply of fresh vegetables for the winter.

There you have it. Send me your news or you'll get more like this.

Thaba Tseka English Medium School, P.O. Box71, Thaba Tseka, Lesotho, Southem Africa; chrisonken@hotmail.com