New Year, New Traditions

Happy New Year y'all! I hope everyone had good celebrations and avoided the worst of the snow storms. I had a great New Year's celebration here, which I'm excited to share with you. I will also share some new routines I've been learning here.

New Year's Eve

My family and I celebrated at my host family's house this time. We started the day on New Year's Eve, of course, with cooking. Maleshoane, one of my sisters, slaughtered two of the family's chickens. She asked if I wanted to try it, which I definitely didn't, but I was ok with watching. The process starts with cutting the heads off, then putting it in hot water to make plucking easier. Again, all I did was hold the bag she was putting the feathers in. Maybe I'll work up to being more involved later...we'll see. After plucking, she cut it into pieces and threw away the parts we don't eat. Which isn't much; here they eat most of the chicken, even the feet! (I tried the foot later and there's very little meat - it's mostly a texture to chew on which wasn't my favorite, but many Basotho like it). It was really cool to see the insides, though. We had one hen and one rooster, so I got to see the differences. The coolest part was seeing the undeveloped eggs inside the hen! They were just small yolks at that point. We then cooked the chickens outside, in a big pot over the fire with some water and spices. Inside the house, I helped chop cabbage to make the moroho dish and we also had papa. I didn't get a picture of this meal, but it was a classic Lesotho dinner and it was nice to eat with family. With all this preparation, we didn't eat until around 8pm.

After dinner, we sat outside and my brothers started preparing a fire for a braai. It's tradition to grill meat after midnight here, so we were going to have a second dinner! It was great to sit around the fire, and one of my 8 year old nephews wanted to tell spooky stories. His were all about big animals fighting each other with ALL the weapons in the WHOLE WORLD! Very spooky. I made up a couple about witches and goblins...probably not the best storytelling but they seemed to enjoy it anyway. It was fun to watch the kids get more and more excited as midnight got closer. A couple of them were jumping around and cheering, and asked me about every 30 seconds how many minutes we had left. Finally, we went back inside to have the 10 second countdown and everyone cheered for the new year. The tradition here at midnight is to pray all together. We all stood in the sitting room, and for about two minutes we said our prayers out loud at the same time. I enjoyed it a lot, because I would sometimes hear snippets of what others were saying. Praying as a family is a great tradition to start the new year.

After prayer was fireworks! I didn't hear any big fireworks, though we saw a couple go off in the distance. My brother had bought some similar to roman candles in the camp town earlier that day. They were skinny tubes that colorful balls of light shot out of. My other nephew lit and held the tube as it went off. Again, there was lots of cheering!

Next was the braai, after the fire was ready. We had chicken and pork, and it was really good. The meat was dipped into a sauce, which I hadn't seen with a braai before. At this point it was about 1:30am. I was getting pretty tired, and didn't get to bed until 2:30am but it was a very fun night.

New Year's Day

The next day, I slept in and woke up to the others already preparing for the day's big lunch. I jumped right in to help make the chakalaka, and ended up making most of it myself this time. We put onion, carrots, bell peppers, cucumber, and garlic. I seasoned it with a chili garlic sauce and salt. I think it turned out pretty good. We also had pork, seasoned with herbs and spices, cooked over the fire like the chicken the day before; beetroot, cut into small pieces with sugar and fruit chutney sauce; and rice. The meal was delicious, and I thought it was nice to have rice as a change from papa. We also had dessert! Alice made it, with some help from me. It's a traditional Lesotho dessert, very similar to the one from the school board lunch in November. It had apple and strawberry jello, strawberry pudding, homegrown/made preserved peaches, and shortbread cookie crumbles (the part I helped with-I crushed them with a mug in lieu of a rolling pin). It turned out pretty tasty. After cleaning up from the meal, I took a much needed nap. It was another good day with family and rest.

Hlatsoa Lipahlo (SHLA-tswah dee-PASH-loh)

For the new year, I'm going to share how I now do laundry, or hlatsoa lipahlo-wash clothes. I use three buckets, pictured below on the right. One to wash, and two to rinse. I fill all three buckets with water before starting. The soap mainly used here is powdered, so that goes into the water before the clothes (pictured to the left, from my training village). My sister here taught me to separate my clothes by color, so I wash the light colors first, then the darker ones, then the darkest. This means I do the whole process in three rounds. After scrubbing something, I turn it inside out to wash the inside then wring it out and put it in the first rinse bucket.

When all the clothes are in the first rinse bucket, I swish them around then wring them out to be put in the second rinse bucket. More swishing and wringing out, then I hang them up to dry. At my family's house here, they hang their clothes on the barbed wire fence, pictured below on the left. I have to be careful with how I hang them so holes don't get poked in the fabric. Usually it's ok to put the thicker materials over the barbs though, I haven't seen any holes yet. I wash right next to the fence, so it's easy to go from the bucket to hanging it up.

This is a bit different from how my mme during training taught me. There, I would put all my clothes in the wash bucket, then just use one rinse bucket. Since I didn't wash next to the clothes line, I put the clean, wrung out clothes in a dry bucket to take over to hang. They also had an actual line, not barbed wire, pictured below on the right. It's interesting to see how different families do laundry here.

The clothes usually dry within a few hours. Since it's the rainy season, there have been a few close calls with getting my clothes down right before it starts raining. My mme is good about knowing when it's about to rain and she'll let me know to get my clothes. There have also been days where I wake up planning to do laundry, but then it's raining so I have to wait until the next day. I'm not sure how it will go in winter, since it will be so cold outside...it takes anywhere from one to two hours to finish laundry. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Bonus - during the past few weeks, in addition to playing lots of cards, some of the younger kids came into my house and saw my decorations. They wanted to learn how I made them, and added their own! I think it's much improved.

That's all for now! School starts here on January 10, so it's coming up. I'm excited to start teaching and getting to know the school here! This weekend, I'm at a workshop for education volunteers and our counterparts. We are working on co-teaching strategies. I'm happy to get to spend time with her before school starts so we can get to know each other and learn each other's teaching styles. I hope everyone has a great start to the new year! Tsamaea hamonate (tsa-MY-ah hah-moh-NAH-teh) - go nicely!