Who's that crazy American driving in the wrong lane...?

Well I am pretty sad to say that Laura seems to be better at driving on the wrong side of the road than me. I guess I am the one on the wrong side -- she is actually good at staying on the right side, which here in Lesotho is the left side.

It has been a week since we have been in Africa and we are starting to settle in. Our hope is to update this blog at least twice a week, possibly more once I start the work in the mountains. It will be the easiest way to keep everyone updated! Also thanks for all the emails- they have been GREAT and we love hearing from you all back home!

I know many of you are curious what life is like here so far. Here is sort of a run-down of the main details:

Housing and Such

• We live in Maseru, which is the only large city in Lesotho. They claim about 180,000 people but after my drive through the outskirts on Friday afternoon I would say it is WAY more than that as there were thousands of people just hanging out in the streets. Literally thousands, or tens of thousands, lining the streets and wandering in front of my car. People here seem to just wander the streets and I would assume it is because there is nothing to do at home since few have power or TV or a yard or anything. Why go home to that…?
• Our home is nice and that is a blessing. More than acceptable by even American standards and very nice by Lesotho standards. Tile floors, dining room, decent kitchen, large back yard. It would not look out of place in any town we have lived in prior. Of course other than being surrounded by a 6’ high concrete wall topped with spikes and razor wire.

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• We live on a dead-end street that is mostly expatriates.Several nationalities are represented in our neighbors.There are 5 pediatricians living on our street.All of us have the high walls and razor wire, and some have full time guards.A few homes are very nice – “American” grade
• Like the home, we are driving a borrowed vehicle big enough for the family. It is a Toyota 4-runner although here it is called a “Surf”. The car has a crazy anti-hijacking system built into it that requires about 17 extra special steps before it will let you start it and once a door is opened you have to repeat some steps or the engine will stall. Although not sure why you would steal this vehicle as there are plenty of nice cars in town including BMW, VW, Volvo, Mercedes, Hummer. Not what you would have expected?.. same here. It is a very odd society mix here in Maseru for sure. A huge gap between the haves and have-nots.
  

Food

• Laura should probably write this part… we do have access to a large variety of normal foods, just not the brands and quality from back in the States. We can get good milk, eggs, great bread, soda, juice, fruit, veggies, etc. Boxed foods not so much – there is no boxed pasta or brownie mix or anything else you would get boxed. And many of the ingredients have to be substituted. Like chocolate in pretty much any form you can’t get (they only have unsweetened cocoa).
• They have breakfast cereal but the names are a little funny and the quality not so good. Don’t get the “Squillios” (bad version of Honey Bunches of Oats with a crazy squirrel character on the box. Ask anyone they will tell you I like squirrels but no so much the Squillios…). But the rice crispies are basically the same and some other choices. Only Kellogs products, no General Mills….
• Decent meat if you know where to get it. Thankfully we were recommended a local butcher and got our first order this afternoon.
• Despite rave reviews we have so far avoided the Chinese “take away” restaurant. It sounds like they have to clear out a sizeable number of cats before they can fire up the woks. Meow

Money

• There are 2 local currencies, the Loti is Lesotho’s own money and they also honor the South African Rand (ZAR). They keep the Loti and Rand on a 1:1 exchange rate so you can use either one even on the same purchase although it gets tough to keep the coins straight. The most confusing part is the exchange rate with the U.S. dollar. Currently the rate is 7.8:1 (one U.S. Dollar worth 7.8 Rand/Loti). This makes for lots of big bills in your wallet that really aren’t worth much. Today at the ATM I took the max machine limit of 800 Rand and was given 20 Rand notes. It was a huge stack of 40 of these 20 Rand bills. (That may not seem funny until you do the math – imaging going to the ATM and getting just over 100 dollars and you get 40 bills.) I felt like a high roller anyway with that huge wad of 20’s.

Around Town

• We have ventured around town a bit. Several key places are very easy to get to from our home like the main grocery store, ATMs, gas stations, other MAF family houses, and the local swimming pool at the Maseru Sun hotel (a very nice hotel with a great outdoor pool – feels like being on vacation in Florida).
• On Saturday we wandered downtown in the markets. People selling about anything from clothing to fruits and veggies. One stand appeared to be some kind of tribute to nature’s oddities as they had strange looking teeth, dried lizards, tiny animal pelts of some kind, etc. The basic necessities I guess. There are some nicer shops blended right in that have clothing at pretty much regular US prices ($40 for a pair of jeans). Fruits and veggies are cheap here, we bought a ton of stuff from a large produce market and off the street and spent about 15 dollars for what would have been well over 30 in the states.
• Everyone we have encountered so far around town has been very friendly. Especially when we have had Elyse with us – the Basotho people love kids and everyone will smile and wave at Elyse and talk to her. It seems to be a bonding point for us and helps us (me at least) feel more comfortable in large crowds of local Basotho people. (In case you were curious there are very few white people in Lesotho. We were the only white people we saw on Saturday morning and I would estimate close to 10,000 people in the market. A person who struggled with racial differences would be very uncomfortable here)

Poverty

• One thing we have noticed is that there is NO part of town that is free from poverty. In the markets there were poor beggars; people with a tiny stand of wares trying to sell enough to buy food. One young woman approached Laura and very politely asked if we had any work she could do as she had no money and really needed work. The same thing happened just tonight in front of the house – a young man rang our gate intercom and I went out to talk with him. He was clearly wearing his only set of clothing. He did not ask for money or food (although I am sure he needed food) but he asked me if I had any old clothing to spare so he could change his clothes in the morning to get a job as he has not been able to get work wearing his rags. He had a ratty old short, sweat pants, and appeared to be wearing house slippers with no socks. It rained all day today and clearly he was outside all day in the rain as he was soaked. I cannot start giving away my clothing so soon here but did give him a new cap and new pair of warm socks. It has gotten chilly here in the evenings and he likely has limited or no housing. He was very grateful. I talked with my friend Tim about these beggars coming to the gate and it sounds like a common occurrence and something we have to get used to. They give out small bags of food and we may have to prepare to do the same.

Work

• My final topic then off to bed. I know many are curious about my work here and today was actually my official first day. Hopefully you all know the reason we are here is to work with Mission Aviation Fellowship on a specific project to build a satellite communications network in the Lesotho mountains. This is to support the development and operation of remote mountain clinics by Partners in Health. About $200,000 worth of satellite and solar panel equipment was shipped to Maseru and was sitting in a container at the MAF hangar when we arrived. Today we opened that container and started to inventory and separate the equipment. We will continue this process throughout the week.

• This weekend the first set of equipment will be trucked to the first installation site at the village of Nohana. Not all of the sites have road access but for those that do the PIH team wants to bring in the hardware by truck. These sites will get a circular satellite dish about 2.4 meters in diameter. It is pretty large. I was a little surprised just how big the hardware was when we started opening boxes today. The clinics without road access get a special dish that comes in pieces small enough to fit into the Cessna aircraft for transport to the village. I will take pictures this week and post some to this site so you can see the size of the equipment.
• Hopefully starting next week I will begin flights into the mountains to do site surveys for the installation of the systems. Then the last week of February will go through the full training on these systems and start installing them in March. I will take plenty of photos once we start flying into the mountains so you can see just how beautiful this country is and the people here.

Alright that is plenty of information for one posting, thanks for reading if you made it this far and check back soon for updates and new photos. As always we appreciate your prayers and emails with words of encouragement and messages for the kids. We are doing well here and there are many blessings for our family already. We hope you too are blessed back home and have a great week and come visit the blog site again soon.

Traig