Oh the adventure of getting where I am sitting is even more exciting than last time! Katie, Mark, Cassandra, and I woke up early to walk the 20 minute walk to catch the taxi at the rock pile. Well, one taxi went by- it was full. We sat and waited (and laughed and danced a little) for another hour before we heard a van in the distance that we were hoping was a taxi-it was! We got up, brushed the dust off and were ready to hop on! Oh, wait, it was full. Out of frustration and a little bit of laughter at the situation, we decided to begin to take the journey head on and walk. We had been walking for just under and hour when a small army of children began to follow us, ask us questions, and tell us how beautiful we are for another thirty minutes or so. What a funny picture that must have been! We then realized that our ambitions of being proactive in walking to the town of Moehles Hoek were too high of a goal. I asked the man of our group, Mark the bodyguard, if we were allowed to ask the next little white pick up that drove by if they would drive us into town. He gave me his permission. About ten minutes later one came driving up! We hopped in the back with the other four Besotho men and were on our 30 minute drive down the mountain. To our understanding, it is illegal to have white people in the back of trucks, so we were expecting to be dropped of once we got into city limits. There are usually police waiting there to check the cars for random and pointless things-but no! Not this time. Score! Every time we came to a hill, with the harsh winding smacking us and the cold rain pelting our faces, we were nervous that there would be a checkpoint- but no. Not a single one! It was totally God's favour that we made it all the way here with out any run-ins with the law. Praise him for that.
These last two weeks spent with my host family have been quite wonderful. There was a Father (which is something that is not common around here), a mother, Mapei 22, Dineo 19, Itumeleng 16, Ntsebeng 12, Makhakhe 8, and Keneuoe 5, as well as Thabang, a 17 year old cousin of the family that has lived there nearly his whole life. The culture of the people of Lesotho is unique. Compared to (which I do not like to do, for the record) Mozambique, these people have so much. I was almost a little shocked when I learned of some of the conveniences that they have. But then I began to think about my life..and my house.. oy was I humbled. The house I stayed in had three different areas, rooms if you will. One area was where they (my mother and three sisters) kept all of their kitchen supplies and did much of the cooking and where a few of them would sleep. Another area was where my parents and the rest of the family would sleep and store the majority of their belongings.Then there was the room where Kaity (the girl on my team that I was paired with because there are almost twice as many of us than there are resident students) and I slept along with the table that we ate most of our meals at. The two of us did almost everything together, including sharing the twin bed, the family's only bed. We ate well. Close to five meals every day. Each meal consisted of a large portion of rice, homemade bread, or pappa (which is pretty much just a stiff starch of a food-I will most a picture later). They would often times pair that with some type of cooked greens or maybe scrambled eggs. We had a very simple diet, but it really was delicious food.
We got to help Mapei a little on his fields. I wish we could have done more work, but because of the lack of manure and the ground being too hard to dig, we were kind of at a stand-still. However, we still learned a lot and even got to help his family plant other gardens. The gardens in his "front yard" were beautiful. I know that where ever it is that I live next- I WILL have a garden like that- and I WILL plant God's way. In addition to the gardens, the had a few different stable areas to hold their dozen cattle, twenty sheep, and few chickens. They also had a few ducks waddling around. Funny story-it started out with five..but oh wait. I got to help SLAUGHTER one!!!! So now they have four. Ohhh was it nasty. Ducks have a lot of feathers. A lot. Mr. Quackers sure did taste good though! It was a huge honor that they chose to do that for us during our stay. I also milked a cow for the first time. Yup. Yes I did. And it was awesome. I did good. It was weird that there was a huge sore on its side that was right in front of my face-but I tried to ignore that and focus on the utters. That was on my bucket list though-I am pretty excited I got to cross it off- in Africa!
While we were with him we also did a lot of walking and hiking. Seeing God's creativity in his creation blows my mind every single day, almost every single hour. The Kingdom of Lesotho is absolutely gorgeous- like nothing I have ever seen. I even got to see dinosaur footprints! I also got to go fishing for a whole day. What an adventure. I didn't catch anything- but the experience and the company made it well worth it.
There are many, many stories I could write about for hours, but unfortunately my time in the internet cafe is about to expire. I guess I will just have to sit down and tell you them in person. I can't wait! I have pictures. Lots of pictures.
God is good. So good.
Pray for the path he has in front of me though, please. There are some great things he has laid in front of me, and I want to go where he wants me to be! I just don't know what that is yet.
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