I wake up almost naturally at the time Caroline’s alarm goes off. She had her 5:30am walk canceled, allowing her to sleep in until 9am Mass. I get up and put on a dress (pants are not allowed for girls at church) and we walk the few steps (through a bit of cow poo) to church. We sat off to the side away from the big crowd (part of the coronavirus deal), and I realized that this is the last Mass I’ll get to go to for the foreseeable future. All large gatherings, including worship services, are banned in Utah. It was cool to have such a meaningful Mass right there in her village.
The priest usually has Caroline give an update on coronavirus at the end of Mass. This time he first asked who I was and welcomed me, then asked me about the coronavirus situation in the US. I tried to make it sound as positive as I could so that the people wouldn’t worry. The priest also asked what we should do to prevent coronavirus. Luckily Carol had been asked the same question at church before, and so I knew the answer: was your hands *with soap, eat vitamin C, cough into your elbow. The priest then translated all of it into Sesotho for everyone, although most people understood what I said. He went on and on, and I was thinking, “you know, we’re not so different. There are signs everywhere in the US to wash your hands, cough into your elbow, don’t touch your face. It’s as if we live in a world with hardly any healthcare nor running water.”
I got to meet some of Caroline’s friends after church which was super nice to meet the people I see in photos.
We come back to the hut to make breakfast and bathe. I take my first bucket bath and I also thought it was pretty good. Wouldn’t want to do it in the winter, but it was great otherwise! Just cleanin’ what ya need to clean and get done with it. Definitely a good way to do it.
We make a massive breakfast of chocolate chip-banana pancakes with eggs with peppers and cheese in them. We were pretty hungry but not quite hungry enough to finish it all!!
All whist making this breakfast, kids are coming up to the door asking if we’re going to the dance competition today. It’s ~40min walk from the village so Carol decides to take the car there since it would be an awesome thing to see. The kids are excited to ride with us, which was probably breaking the coronavirus deal, but they got SO much joy out of it, it was insane. They were sitting out the windows and stuffed in the trunk all while blasting the music, they were loving it. I had fun dancing with them, I needed to dance. We pile out and wait for the dancing to start. After probably 1.5h it finally begins, but this gave us good time to catch up.
The dancing was awesome; it was our village versus the village where the competition was being held. Everyone had killer dance moves, and our village’s girls had even make their own fun cool skirts and coordinated really well. It was so fun to see.
After an hour or two of watching everyone dance, we decide to go down to the boy’s soccer game with Caroline’s friend, Nsati. We had fun watching, but the sun started to set so we headed home. Packing even more kids in the car, we head back home where everything goes smoothly until it doesn’t. Feet away from Carol’s place, we hit a ledge wrong and one of the plastic guards on the side comes off. Oops. While it definitely shook up Erica and me for a bit, we were sure glad we got insurance.
Carol bathes while Erica and I clean dishes from this morning. I’m not sure how we came up with so many dishes. Afterward we make dinner, macaroni and cheese. Yum! We watch Criminal Minds and Until They See Us before heading to bed. Good way to relax after a sunny and kinda stressful day there in the end.
As we’re dozing off, Caroline reads a news article sent to her by nearly every Pece Corps volunteer in Lesotho. South Africa closes its borders to citizens of a handful of countries, including the US. Shit. Lesotho is one of the few country-locked counties in the world; there’s literally no other way to get out than to go through South Africa. It’s almost humorous the timing of it all. We go to bed knowing that we can’t do anything until the morning.
It was then that I took my first dump in the latrine. Nothing like a good stress turd or two. The whole day was SO nice and relaxing getting away from coronavirus shit, but reality unfortunately had to hit us so soon.
2025-02-13