Hey All!
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| Bushman Cave Paintings |
(WARNING: this is a bit of a longer post so make sure you have time to read or just skim! :)
So it really has not been super long since I last posted a blog but it feels like it has been while. On December 30th, Nikki, Lydia, James and I all headed to Lesotho for 10 days. We went there to see some of the partners that MCC has in Lesotho. It was also a bit of a time to relax, though the time that we relaxed was well balanced by the amount of work the partners put us to! :)
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| James, Me, Nikki and Lydia at the falls |
For the first 5 days we stayed at a lodge in the Maluti Mountains called Malealea Lodge. It was beautiful! Honestly if you are someone who likes adventure and are wanting a cheap place to stay while in Southern Africa, you should check it out! It’s known for it’s pony trekking and mountain bike paths. This was our time to relax, and we did by drinking coffee in the afternoons, reading books we brought along, listening to music of a local choir and band, going on hikes and pony rides and of course celebrating New Years with a bunch of strangers from all over the globe!
Our first full day (New Years Eve) in Malealea Lydia, Nikki and I went on an hour hike to the bushman cave paintings. On our way down to the caves we were doing pretty well but on the trek back to the lodge we all thought we must really be out of shape, though than we remembered that Lesotho is known to be the highest elevated country in the world, so really we were just not used to the altitude….well at least that is what we let ourselves believe! The paintings were really cool. We had a local guide take us to the 3 different caves and he was pretty good at answering our questions. Though at one point Lydia asked how long the paintings had been on the wall and his answer was 400,000 years ago!!! Haha! We all just smiled and nodded than later laughed about how that probably was not the case!
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| Us at the rock pools! |
New Years Eve was fun! We were really not sure what we were going to do to bring in the new year. Especially because we were all really tired by 8:00! Though we somehow made it! After dinner the 4 of us all sat in the dinning hall chatting when suddenly James got up and said “I think there is something going on in the other room, lets check it out!” So we all went over to the bar area and and sure enough there was loud music playing and some people dancing. James than put down his sweater and looked at us and said “When in Rome!” and headed off to dance with the crew that was dancing. And the rest was history, we danced the new year in to familiar songs and songs we had never heard.
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| Road trip Selfie with Pros |
On January 1st the four of us went on a trail ride to some water falls. It took us almost 5 hours to get there, see the water fall and go back. We had mostly wind and sunshine, though there was a bit of rain that came down while we ate lunch at the falls. I had not been on a long trail ride before and this one was good, though a bit of a challenge. There were lots of hills and narrow paths we went down. And on foot really it would not have been that bad but when you are sitting on top of a horse and are going along a path where the rocks under foot are not super stable and there is a drop off to one side and a rock wall to the other side, you really have to trust the horse you are on. With in the first few minutes my horse I was on decided to trip at bit and went down on her knees. It scared me a bit mostly because I was not sure if she would try to get up right away or if she would let me get off safely. Well she did, I kinda just rolled off her and tried to get up as soon as I could because I was mostly afraid of her stepping on me trying to get back up. I thought a lot about my parents and my younger sisters during this trail ride. My mom because I knew that she would be pooping her pants if she was on the ride with us (she does not like heights and even hates when a rode is like a described it where there is a cliff on either side.) My dad and sisters because I knew they would probably love it! And Reilly specifically because of the fall and how often she has gotten hurt by horses and I did not want to be added into the count of injuries by horse. But over all it was a fantastic ride! :)
On our last day we trekked to some rock pools. Which was beautiful, it was my favourite place we went to!
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| Our Trail Ride (Before I fell) |
So after our stay at Malealea Pros joined us and then James headed back to PMB. But not with out a little car trouble in between! The first partner we visited was called Growing Nations. The organization’s goal is to help Lesotho people use conservation agriculture. Lesotho is a big farming country but there are lots of crops that have a hard time growing because the top soil gets washed away by heavy rains and then all the soil washes down the mountains into South Africa and to the oceans. They teach students to use a cover crop method which helps keep soil in place and also helps weeds to not take root and take over the crop. (If you want to know more about that you can always ask me and I would be happy to share or could look up Growing Nations Lesotho online.) While there we did quite a bit of weeding because the students has been away for over 3 weeks so they had not been maintained as nicely as they could have been. They put us to work in the warm warm sun, we each wore 50 SPF and still got some tans. Though because when you bend over often your shirt will rise up and we did not think about this so some of us have a nice little red strip on our lower backs. The best part of going to Growing Nations for me was getting to see Rorisang, an IVEPer I had met a few years ago while I was working with MCC Saskatchewan. He was placed in BC at a farm there. It was just really great to be able to have seen him in Canada during his placement and then being able to come to Lesotho and see him excelling at this job there.
After spending two and a half days at Growing Nations we headed off to MCC’s other partner, Paballong Trust. Paballong is mostly known for their HIV and AIDS medical clinic, but they do much more than just helping with medical aid in the community. They also have chickens, rabbits, cows, ducks and pigs to sell or sell their products to to local community. Where MCC is involved is their day care centre across the street. Here is where patients who have young kids can bring their children to be taken care of while they get treatment or have appointments. The reason this was started was because they noticed families would take the older children out of school to help take care of the younger siblings now this way the older kids can stay in school while their parents are gone to appointments. While at Paballong they put us three SALTers to work in their little garden to help do some more weeding. We probably would have been over at the day care, but because it is summer holidays they were closed, so we’re put to work in a more helpful capacity. We were really only there for one full day which was much to short to actually see the amount of stuff they all do for the community. (If you would like to know more about Paballong Trust I would be happy to answer any questions or feel free to look them up online as well!)
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| Rori and I! :) |
Our road trip ended with an 8 hour drive back to PMB in a little BMW Golf. We were five coming back as we were bringing an IVEP alumni to PMB so he could start working at the MCC office. It was nice and cozy but I am very thankful for AC!
Randomly this morning while still in PBM I rolled over at 5:10 and looked at my phone and noticed I had a message from Tyla and Tasha. I decided to quickly write them back just to say hi and than they replied quickly asking if they could FaceTime with me. So very early this morning I went into the living room at James and Joan’s house and talked with friends from home. They were all over at my place in Saskatoon with Tyla playing games. I was a little jealous I was not there but mostly I was just sleepy. I think I was a bit of their entertainment as I just remember them laughing at me lots. Haha! That’s okay it was good to caught up quickly and see some of them who I had not talked to in awhile! Thanks guys for the early morning visit!
Now I am back a Lily of the Valley for one more week, as school at Hope Valley Farm School starts next week on the 21st of January. I am going to try and soak in as much of the kids as I can and to enjoy the time that I get to spend with them here at Lily.
Sorry this was so long…but I did warn you so…
Until next time remember to sunscreen your backside too! ;)
The movie nights we had were for the high school students. They seemed to enjoy them! They watched Aeon Flux, Red Dawn and Leap Year. Even though you are just watching a movie it was nice to hangout with them.
Some other moments that I want to make sure I remember is getting into a water fight with some of the kids on a really hot day. First it was the little kids and then it died out and everyone dried off. But then there was a group of older kids who decided it was their turn and even though I never went over by the tap or had any water bottle for defence I got completely drenched. Than after most of me dried, except for the part of my pants where my shirt hung over and when I lifted it up on of the kids asked if I ‘wee weeed!’ And then started shouting Ms. Rebecca wee weeed! haha It was funny.