Moshoeshoe’s Day (and other updates)

Hi y’all! It’s been a busy couple weeks here in the Mountain Kingdom. Mostly because we were preparing for Moshoeshoe’s Day (moh-SHWEH-shwehs day). King Moshoeshoe was the founder of the Basotho nation, and the day to honor him was this past Saturday, March 11. That’s taken up a lot of time at school, and there are also a couple other updates I have for y’all!

Moshoeshoe’s Day

For the celebration, my school hosted 5 other primary schools from around the area. We had been preparing almost since school started back in January. The students were involved in the celebration by participating in races, singing, and dancing. So the runners, singers, and dancers spent part of every school day training. The past couple weeks, the parents were also coming to the school to help make the grounds look nice. The students and teachers helped too, including adding a stone path around the office (pictured left), planting flowers (pictured below), cutting the grass, and generally making everything beautiful and ready for the other schools to come. The day before, Friday, the teachers spent time cooking some food and preparing the rest

of the food to be cooked the next day. I helped make the ginger drink. We made 70 liters! It has ginger powder, tartaric acid, cream of tartar, sugar, and water. And more sugar. I had fun finally learning how to make it, since I really like it and it's a popular drink often made for celebrations. Below on the top left is some teachers making food preparations, and the rest of the pictures are the process of making the ginger drink. Add the ginger powder, cream of tartar, and tartaric acid to boiling water, mix, then add to the rest of the water along with the sugar. Then stir a lot with the big stick. Simple and delicious!

The students helped do last minute cleaning, such as washing the classroom windows, sweeping, and picking up trash. Then, Moshoeshoe's Day finally arrived! We arrived at school at the usual time in the morning. The teachers had a uniform that was made specifically for this day, a collared white shirt and a hat with the school logo. Some other teachers also wore seshoeshoe. Mapakiso, pictured below on the top right, was wearing a traditional African dress of a cow. Some of the students also wore the dress, which is the same tassel skirt with a cropped top, and some also wore beaded necklaces and the headdress. Others made a Lesotho flag into a dress by tying it around their neck. I had a costume change - I wore the teacher uniform in the morning and my seshoeshoe in the afternoon.

When we arrived in the morning, we started cooking right away. We had over 90 plates to prepare for the teachers and other adults there helping! Students were allowed to bring any special food they wanted. There were also people selling sweets, chips, balloons, whistles, and other goodies like at a carnival. Once the visitors all arrived, the day was kicked off with an assembly to pray and talk about the significance and history of the day. After that was the races. There was a sack race, three legged race, and usual track events - the 100, 200, and 400 meter dashes, mile, and 4x100m and 4x400m relays. The students were divided into junior/senior girls and junior/senior boys by age. There was no overall school winner, but each race had a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. All the schools had multiple students place 1st! It was very exciting to watch and cheer on my school alongside the other students and teachers, and see the support of the other schools for their runners. After all the student events, the teachers did their own 100m race. I’ll just say I might be slightly out of shape…but we had fun:) After the races, we ate lunch. Well, most people ate lunch, while the teachers who had been cooking and I helped serve the food for the adults. I forgot to take a picture, but we served rice, carrot slices, green salad, and chicken, with the custard/jelly dish for dessert (refer to my New Year's post if you want to learn the dessert recipe!). Everything was very good! Then came the singing and dancing performances. Each school had one singing group and one dancing group that performed. They were traditional dances, which was really cool to watch. Some of the songs and dances are also accompanied by a drum, and one school had an accordion! A lot of the songs were about King Moshoeshoe. After the performances, it was time to say bye to our visitors. We had a super exciting and busy day, and I loved seeing and learning more about Basotho culture!

Career Day

The Friday before, March 3, was Career Day! (Interestingly, I learned this is something our school does on our own, it’s not a national day that all schools participate in.) All the students came dressed as the career they want to have when they grow up. There were police, soldiers, DJs, nurses, doctors, lawyers (pictured below), chefs, mechanics, fashion designers, and more. We had a big gathering where each career came up to the front to present. Some of the older students had prepared speeches about the pros and cons of their chosen career. Others acted out what they would do, like the soldiers marching and saluting. It was great seeing all of them dressed up, and to hear all the speeches!

Fun Updates

Reeses has the first fun update for y’all…she had kittens!! There are four of them, and they’re so tiny. I’ve never seen kittens that are not even a day old, and they’re so adorable. I check in on them every day, but I know they’ll grow up too fast.

It was also Malehloa’s birthday on March 3rd! We went to a restaurant in town I haven’t been to before and got pizza. It was a great time, and her cousin came too so I enjoyed meeting more of the family.

Random thing, I climbed a tree! I saw it across the field from my school and went to see if it would be a good one, and it was. I’m not sure when the last time I climbed a tree was. Spent a few relaxing minutes looking out at the view before climbing down. The students climb the peach trees to pick peaches, and those are definitely too small for adults so I'm happy to have one I can climb too.

Those are my updates for this post! Stay tuned for more kitten pictures:) And, of course, more exciting things from school. As always, thanks for reading and sharing this amazing journey with me. Ke hantle (keh HAN-kleh)! Bye!