January 10th
I’m thinking of starting a detective agency in my village. Just like the “The Number One Ladies Detective Agency” series by James Alexander Macall. I love the series. It’s about a woman in Botswana, Africa who starts a detective agency to solve mysteries. Usually the mysteries are silly, like a father will hire a detective to follow his daughter after school to see where she goes. But usually at the end of the book the detective solves a legit mystery. I think I could start a detective agency because a lot of mysteries happen in the villages. First we have my dog swap. I still don’t know how that happened in that situation. Also, my organization’s fisheries project is without fish. The members of the group think all of the fish were stolen during the holidays. This theory is interesting to me because I’ve never seen a fish in the dam since I’ve been here. The water has always been too murky and high to see what is in the water. Now the water is so low from the heat that we are able to see in the dam and…there are no fish! Then we have the big mystery- just the other day, my host father’s shop was broken into! The criminal stole 1000Rand, but while doing so, dropped his phone which contains all of his contact information. Now my family is trying to get a hold of the police so they can track the numbers in the cell and see if any of the contacts will tell them who the owner of the phone is. I believe they will find that thief…and he’s going to be sorry because the village is too small for a criminal to live there once he has been caught.
To keep ‘The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency –Lesotho’ a sustainable project, maybe I can train somebody on what it takes to be a detective and then help them write a business planJ
January 8th
A couple of days ago I returned from vacation in Durban. Richard came to Lesotho two weeks ago to visit me and see my life here. We had a great time and spent several days at my site and then headed to Durban where we had such a good time.
(To Richard: I will be writing about you in this post. Hope it’s okay ;))When we rented a car, the rental company had upgraded us to a BMW. In a typical situation I would have been excited, but it made me nervous because I was worried people in my village wouldn’t believe me anymore when I tell them I don’t have money…but it worked out fine and Richard was able to navigate the horrible road to my villages. At site, I introduced him to all my friends, my host family, and my co-workers. He seemed to enjoy seeing my life and I believe it made him understand what the hell I’ve been up to. We did a lot of walking since that is what I do. I showed him how to take a bucket bath, carry water, and light the house. Richard carried his own water and people were laughing because it’s usually a woman’s job. But it’s really good for people in these villages to see that stereotypical gender roles can be shared. He also got to eat all of the traditional Basotho foods like Motoho (sour porridge) and try Joala (traditional beer). I don’t think he was impressed with either, but he was a good sport.
I When we headed to South Africa, we stayed along the coast in a town called Port Shepstone. We stayed in a backpackers /hostel for several nights where we met really cool people and spent tons of time on the beach. After that, we went to Durban and stayed in a really nice B&B on the hip part of town. Everything was perfect and I’m super stoked about planning my next trip to South Africa.
