Laying around all day

November 1, 2008

Started the day off early, 4 a.m. – what kind of a country has sunrise at 4:30 a.m.? There are so many animal and people sounds by 5 a.m. that I wonder how any of us ever sleep beyond that time. 

We had a driver hired to pick up Jeff and Gary and take them to the airport in Maseru at 5:00 a.m.  ‘M’e Mamlompho had given me his cell number and asked me to call him at 4:30 a.m. to make sure he was up.  And then of course, my intermittent cell service failed at the key time!  But we were prepared to make the run in the Little Miss Sunshine bus, so there were no real worries.  But the driver appeared at 4:45 so all was well.  Except for the fact that his car looked like in had been in multiple accidents and his emergency brake didn’t work! (The car was rolling away from us as we loaded luggage into the trunk.  Driver, Sikelele, saved the day by placing a rock in front of one of the tires).

After that we tried to get back to sleep, without much success.

We had met two new Help Lesotho volunteers last evening, Patti and Stewart from Victoria BC. They had just arrived for a three month service term. They will take up residence at the Pitseng Youth Centre on Tuesday. This morning they moved from a rondavel on the convent grounds into the guest house with us.  They are a nice middle aged couple and they will certainly have an exciting adventure over the next three months, including spending Christmas in Lesotho!

We wandered over to Shoprite and we all picked up a few items for lunch.

In the late afternoon we moved back over to Cheers at the hotel, met one of the Basutho volunteers and convinced him and two friends to join us for dinner.  They were all quite entertaining.  There was a brief thunderstorm, with lots of lightning, but only a few minutes of rain, not nearly enough to even make a dent on the drought.  The pizza was good – that’s all we ever order!

 Drifted back to the convent, teased the nuns for awhile, and then went to bed.