Joburg and Maseru in a few pics.

Me at the 46664 concert.The Soweto Gospel Choir - great stuff.

Who doesn't need a few Namibian friends every now and again?

The view from some other seats at the end of the concert. I was in the front of the mass of people.

Me in the front of the mass of people.

Nice shot of Lesotho, most of the country resembles this to some degree.

My work's bus. All organizations here in Lesotho advertise themselves this way.

Work. Pretty idyllic looking - no?

Imagine them all saying "Abuti Jeff! Abuti Jeff!" or Mosa saying "Abuti Jep-ay," since his Fs aren't so good yet.

All the kids we've got currently.
Early X-mas at Baylor College of Medicine Pediatric AIDS Clinic. Too many kids, not enough bouncy castle. All cute.

Matlatse (or Matty, if we Amurricanize it) at the Pediatric AIDS Clinic. His face is swolen, but we don't know why yet. His liver isn't so hot now either as it's the size of a football. Given that he's only a few footballs large, that's a bad thing.

Matlatse giving me some lint he found on the floor. He likes to keep his play space clean.

Seasons greetings.

Food for thought! Courtesy of an organization I worked with in HK.

Since I missed Harroween as I was in Shanghai, and I'm sort of missing x-mas here in Lesotho.

I've been having a very rewarding time here working for Beautiful Gate and I've come to form bonds with a few of the older children. Nelali even said her first words yesterday and they were "Abuti Jeff" which is "Young unmarried man Jeff" in Sesotho. Everyone has a formal title here that denotes your age and married or unmarried status, sort of like Ms./Miss/Mrs/Master but you use them *all* the time. We spent the other day at the Baylor (College of Medicine) Pediatric AIDS Clinic. A south african business man donated food and toys for all the patients, or in reality anyone who showed up and knew what was going on. We spent the entire day sitting outside in a queue waiting to get food and presents, eventually we had to leave because our kids had missed lunch - and as the kid I was caring for, Matlatse, already has so many health problems eating properly is so important. He hasn't started HAART - highly active anti-retroviral therapy - yet as he's still being treated for acute renal failure and TB. He came to us by reference of the Baylor Clinic as they noticed his 14 yr old sister was bringing him in for treatment, but he continued to deteriorate. They discovered that both his parents were deceased and she was trying to raise him.

My only real qualm with the orphanage is that I feel the HIV+ kids don't get quite the amount of nutrition they require - namely they get fed the same as everyone else. Poz kids require 1.5-2 times as much as a normal kid, more if they have GI problems. I've noticed this with Matlatse particularly as he is so lethargic, and when he tries to speak it comes out as a faint whisper. He seems to be in great pain while he chews, or at least it's so much work that he has great difficulty doing it. Lunch is always soft foods like overcooked carrots, mashed taters, rice, or pap (maize meal) so he has no problem with that, and even feeds himself. However, the rest of the food is generally whole fruit and cookies. I've been trying to break it up the best I can for him to eat, and I always give him more than the others but it's so hard to tell if he's getting better or worse. The bo-me (older unmarried women) tell me he's much better than he was, but I wonder if he's reached a plateau. Only time will tell I suppose. Well, I'll post some slightly saddening pics in a few days..but for now you can all bask in ignorant bliss!

Jeff

The Highland Kingdom, again.

According to the UN it's the 26th Least Developed Country, but even then most people seem to have everything they absolutely require - with the notable exception of health care. I've been having a wonderful time here despite the daily rainstorms (seems like a monsoon to me!) and the mean nuns. I've been staying at Anglican convents, and nuns really aren't the nicest people I've ever met. But how can you talk back to a nun when she says "I'm sorry you paid for dinner, but I'm just so tired today that I can't be asked to cook." Did I get a refund? No, but she showed me the kitchen and gave me free reign. Fair enough I suppose, and I made sure to eat my $3 worth and then some. I've been working with an orphanage here that caters to children from 6 weeks to 3 yrs. My daily duties include: feeding, playing, and cleaning them. I don't think I've yet realized that these kids are not orphans because their parents died, but because they were simply abandoned at some point in time. Most were left at Queen II Hospital here in Maseru, but others were just left on the street for no apparent reason. Few of the kids are HIV+ and most are in good health, so I've not quite figured out why they were abandoned other than general economic strain that it places on the woman. The orphanage used to have a wonderful success rate with having kids internationally adopted, mostly to Germany, Belgium, and Holland..but the Lesotho government has placed a moratorium on international adoption for the time being due to issues of child trafficking. As the center only cares for kids up to 3 and the moratorium is recent, it is unclear what will happen when these children get too old to stay there any longer. And in other news, I've been invited to a christmas party at a local Masotho (singular form of Basotho) colleague's house, so I won't be alone with the evil nuns. Kitty is also coming to visit me in India for her Spring Break and I'm planning to follow the Red Ribbon Express, a train covering thousands of miles in India from Dec. 1st 2007 to Dec. 1st 2008, doing HIV/AIDS education and testing in some of the poorest places. No spot on the train though, I'll be chasing it via public transport the whole way. Hope everyone did well with finals and/or is enjoying the holidays!

Jeff

Back in Africa

I've finally made it back to the region of the world I love the most - Sub-Saharan Africa. It's inexplicable to most people, and even to myself I can see no rhyme or reason to it. Why would someone want to work in a region that is fundamentally politically unstable, perennially at war, without potable water, rife with poverty, a myriad of parasites, communicable diseases, and the present absence of a viable infrastructure? Perhaps I feel that just my physical presence here is welcomed and my interest in most of a continent of people I've never met is appreciated. More often than not in China I felt as though I was a nuisance or an intruder - an outsider poking his nose where it didn't belong. Only in one organization in Hong Kong did I get fair treatment and open access to the majority of their services, the rest of China was far from a waste - but I should have been more critical of my time in certain places as in the end I should have left China after three months, not four. But in the end I did make it to the World AIDS Day Concert in Johannesburg in South Africa on time.

The 46664 (Nelson Mandela's prison ID #) concert was quite amazing and had a number of Zulu, Afrikaans, British, and American artists which incuded a sermon by none other than "superstar" Annie Lennox where she proceeded to cast a shadow of guilt on the crowd for not supporting HIV/AIDS work - a bit strange given that we were all at the concert whose funds were being donated to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. Mandiba, the Zulu name for Mandela, also gave a speech which is probably to be his last public appearance. At 89 and secretly to be suffering from Alzheimer's, I can't imagine he would be able to make another speech like that again. After Mandiba's speech, Akon performed - probably the musical highlight of the night. Each performer had the stage for 2-4 songs, with Peter Gabriel (why?!) taking the maximum allowed time. The only exception was the last artist, Annie Lennox..who seemed to go on forever. After 5 songs, none of which anyone seemed to know, a girl from Chicago I was with named Ramanda remarked "Jeff, you gotta go tell Annie that this song isn't 'Sweet Dreams,' I think she's confused." In the end we did get our "Sweet Dreams," but only after 7-8 songs of Lennoxian hell. The next day I made my way to a drag race.

The first thing I noticed about the event was that it was all Afrikaaners, descendants of the european settlers that came to South Africa as long as four centuries ago. Overweight, sunburned, blonde hair and blue eyed whites in wife beaters filled the stands of the slightly run down race track. The only difference between home and this little place in South Africa was Bud Light was replaced with Black Label and English with Afrikaans. Oh, and race relations were much poorer here as well as evidenced by the references to the "monkeys" working the bar. I was a bit shocked to say the least, but as segregation ended only 13 yrs ago in South Africa, I should hardly be. The races were uneventful other than that, one motorcycle made it over 185 mph. No accidents or deaths - where's the fun in that? The next day I flew to Lesotho.

Flying into Lesotho from South Africa on my tiny propeller driven plane went off without a hitch - the first thing I noticed upon descent was how the country looked exactly like a greener version of the American Southwest. After landing I realized this country's main airport was about half the size of Bowman Field. It has one airstrip and the total size of the terminal was surely no larger than 10,000 sq. feet, which of course was a bit of a shock after being in Hong Kong's new airport which is the largest building in the world.

As some of you may know, my family has been fostering two children from Lesotho for more than two years. I've been staying with one of the families of these two kids in a village outside of the capital city. The other day I went to the mountains to visit a Canadian NGO called "Save Lesotho," I'm not sure if Lesotho needs saving..but the work they do is good nonetheless. At the moment I'm shopping around for work as it were, but I've already found people respect me much more here than they did in China and I can tell I do know enough about the field to make meaningful suggestions on how to better run their services here. Well, that's enough for now - hope everyone has good holidays & new year.


Jeff