Laborwise I spent about half of the time on my building site, the construction of a disabled-friendly toilet at the St. Angela home, which is of course connected to a DEWATS-plant. This month we could celebrate the initiation of both.
After some intense weeks and months and the constant back and forth between the construction company and TED-BORDA it finally found a satisfactory conclusion.
I am proud about my first blueprint being realized. Additionally to the construction supervision I also had to organize many other parts of the project: to organise the fabrication of a curved sliding door only was one of many interesting aspects I did in my works for TED-BORDA in Maseru.
The work here is very interesting, and since things are not as conventional here as we know it from Germany, one must improvise in many cases. But in the end of this sometimes hard work you will know what you have achieved and that it did not just come to you. Next to no one calls back and generally time really is relative. In conversations it is hard to find out what your counterpart is thinking, and even if he/ she advances a certain view, he won’t necessarily let you become aware of it. Not only because of a partly existing barrier of language, but also in an general lack of communication this tends to the result that you have to talk like a bull in a china shop has to move. Along the lines of: Think thrice, than speak.
But fortunately life here does not only consist of work. The contact to locals still is, after a half a year, somehow heavy-going. So the most friends I have made are from inside the International Community. At some point this is really fun and all the time something is happening, but unfortunately this also implicates many goodbyes as next to no one has the same date of arrival and departure. For that reason I already had to say goodbye to some of my friends and this will not have been the last time. Sadly I´m pretty sure of this.
Since March I finally could move out from the B&B I was staying in for the first 4months and move in to the DED guesthouse, where I share a flat with two other Germans who both work for DED (Deutschen Entwicklungsdienst.) And as long as there is no need of the DED I can stay there until I will leave Lesotho. This guesthouse is really comfortable: we all have our own room, the flat has a bath, a kitchen and a living room, but the pride of the whole guesthouse is its veranda – our little oasis, even though right now it gets colder in Lesotho and the occasions less to actually enjoy it.
The way we arrange our week-ends has not really changed. Along with friends we try to do tips to Lesotho or Southern Africa. Trips to the Tsehlanyane National Park or the Bokon Nature Reserve were both a good alternation to life in Maseru. The highlight for me was my visit in a small village near Qachas Nek’s where Mantopi, the head of BORDA’s local partner organisation TED is originated from. She invited me to accompany her to a business trip in her home region. Both parents and her sister live there. The experience to stay in a round hut in such an original, little village, where there is neither a water connection to the house nor electricity, and sleeping on the ground and to participate in daily Basothen live – such an opportunity one can barely have.
Unfortunately even though I have Sesotho-lessons since November last year my language skills were not enough to really communicate with the family. In Maseru almost every one speaks English so there is hardly a chance to practise.
It was a very good experience on the one hand; on the other it was oppressive as well. Many people are sick, have HIV or AIDS. On our last day we wanted to visit the sister of a friend of the family. The boy was sick as well, both parents died and for a longer time period no one visited the hospital. It took us back into the harsh reality when we heard on Friday that the girl died already on Wednesday. The terrible reality is, that many families get “wiped out”,. Many do not admit that they have HIV which worsens the problem. No treatment means that they slowly die of this disease, while denying bears the danger of spreading it. But luckily there are people who do not deny their illness with AIDS and therewith are an example or a role model for others who are infected as well. A first step into the right direction!
After 6 months it can be concluded that the difference in the two mentalities sometimes can frustrate – on the one hand the German timeliness and accuracy. On the other hand the slow and deliberate rhythm of life which is very comprehensible. If you grow up in a culture where life can be really short, one savors each day more. Maybe this is even the better way to live life, and not to be under the influence of the rhythm of the clock hand.
