Mother: She is a do-it-all, progressive Basotho, with a heart of gold. Her husband passed away in 2003, survived by their seven living successful children. A success story: one of their sons is a DOCTOR in NEW YORK. Most of her children have moved to South Africa, minus one who lives here in my district. She is a retired (ha, ha) principal from the primary school about a 20-minute walk away. She works for Red Cross, runs Thaba Tseka Poultry, is very active at the Roman Catholic Church, and has taken in four orphans (plus me). Yesterday, she officially gave up her position as head of the school board because she feels overcommitted for her age. You think? Oh, she also runs one of the four restaurants in town, “breeds” dogs, and has her own piggery. “Collector of the nations” is the English translation of her nickname.
Oldest Sister: She is 32 and does the cooking at my host mother’s restaurant. She wants me to learn to speak Sesotho more than anything else in this world. (I am trying, I really am!) I enjoy when she pops in each night after work to say hello. She never finished school, and seems eager to go back someday!
Middle Sister: This one is a piece of work. I am probably closest to her. Her English is the best of all my siblings and she is closest in age to me at 26. We can joke around together, much appreciated. I am teaching her all about sarcasm. It is an extremely important secondary project I am working on. She is repeating 11th grade for the third time this year at my high school. My host mother keeps her occupied with work to keep her out of “trouble.” She is always gardening, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and thinks it is funny that I like to watch her. She rarely lets me help, which she claims is because I need to relax… I think she is trying to tell me I slow her down.
Younger Sister: She is the newest, most adorable orphan. She has only been living with my host mother since October 2009. She is 15 and in seventh grade at the primary school my host mother used to be the principal of. She is INCREBILY shy (we are talking seven words in five weeks to me) and speaks ZERO English. Despite this, I still feel like we have bonded. She finds my expressive personality quite funny. It would probably be funny to all of you too because as you well know I am not expressive. Here you have to be, and yes I overdo it to make my point clear (you can NOT get rid of the dogs in the middle of the night without telling me, I think it is HYSTERICAL when you go at the rats* in my place with brooms, and hauling pigs in bags is NOT normal in America). Brother: He is 17 and repeating 11th grade for the second time. He also attends school where I teach. He seems to have a really large friend base. The girls never talk about their friends or seem to have no time for “hanging out.” From observation, he does not seem to have near the amount of responsibility and keeps to himself most of the time. When he is out and about doing “man work” he loves to stop and talk to me. Most of our conversations involve comparing and contrasting American and Lesotho. He is well aware of my mission: he has two years left of high school and I have two years here. He is WAY more optimistic about our goal than middle sister. I look forward our tutoring sessions where the he eagerly tries to conceptualize fractional distillation, atomic mass, and elements.
*Is it really possible I could get rats in two different huts, seven hours apart? Yep! And you thought I was kidding when I said without cats there are numerous rats. Not kidding, not one bit. Dogs killed the cats. No cats make for happy rats!
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