Von with Rex and Our temporary house in Maseru West
| Scatterlings
of Africa* The Newsletter of Lois and PZ's Mission in Africa Volume
1 – I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto
|
The next day we packed up the luggage on his trailer and piled into the car for the trip to Lesotho. It was a beautiful drive – the countryside was gorgeous – wide open vistas with green green farms. We even passed a game preserve with zebras and rhinos but they were well off in the distance. The roads are good. They are single lane each way with a good shoulder. It is customary for a slower car to move partly onto the shoulder so a faster car behind can pass. Oncoming cars move partially onto their shoulder as well and all three cars pass travelling at 120 KPH (Kilometers per hour) with the car that is passing going down the center of the highway straddling the white line.
As we approached Lesotho we reached the foothills of the Drakensburg Mountains. Maseru is built into the foothills and as you approach the border you see houses at all sorts of heights in the hills. David brought us to the home of another missionary family who has been on furlough for six months and won’t be back until February 17. We have until then to find a place of our own. David’s wife, Roxi, did some shopping for us and stocked the fridge and cupboards with some basic food stuffs, dishes, pots etc. She has also put sheets on the beds and provided us with towels and soap. What a great welcome!
Rex - King of the HouseIn the first nine days we manage to set the alarm off 4 times. Lois pushes the panic button in the dark thinking it is the light switch. Min Joo and I step into the living room before the motion detector is disarmed etc. etc. I am afraid that we will have a real incident and the security company will say, "oh, they probably just set off the alarm again."
Although the family who normally lives here is away, one member of the family is still here. He is part of the security system as well. His name is Rex and he is a playful but well behaved 80 pound German Shepard. (How come dogs like this are always named Rex or King and never Fifi or Poopsy). He has done much to get Nu and Min Joo over their fear of big dogs. They love to play with him.
Von with Rex and Our temporary house in Maseru West
The neighborhood is called Maseru West. It is the political center and just about the most desirable section of the city. The pastor of the church we will attend and his wife live behind us – with a regular (non-security fence) between us. Across the street from Pastor Bryan and Eve lives the American Ambassador on a large piece of land surrounded by a white wall and protected by guards. Pastor Bryan and Eve have invited us for supper but the ambassador has yet to welcome us to the neighborhood. I am sure she has us on her calendar, though!
The schools for the kids, Maseru Prep School for Nu Ella and Min Joo and Machabang College for Von, are a half mile away. School started Monday, January 10th. We walk the kids to school for the first week of class and Lois walks to work. David gets us a loaner car and I start driving everyone after Lois has a disturbing incident with some local teenagers who hassle her and the kids.
The Prime Minister lives in a huge round house which is on the way to the school. By the way, when the PM leaves his home with his police car escort you had better get to the side of the road as they go screaming past. They do not take kindly to motorists who do not get out of the way quickly enough. You don’t have the same problem with ambulances though. That’s because there are none. If you get into a serious accident you better stay conscious long enough to reach your cell phone and call a friend who can come and take you to a hospital that you would never go to if you had a choice.
The FortPeople are sympathetic and say "you’ll get used to it". What is unsaid is "or else you will give up and go back home in six months". We visit a house that the Baptist mission owns but is currently empty. They want very much to have someone there, not only for the rent but also so they don’t have to pay for the night guard that they hire. The other missionaries call it the Fort. They apparently had some problems when it was less secure and so they secured it well. Very well, indeed. It has massive walls and window protectors that look like gun emplacements. It is a very nice house but we just can’t live caged in a fortress like this one.
We try to tell people that in Deerfield if a package is too big for the mailbox, the mail person is likely to put it on your kitchen table if you are out for the day – since most people don’t lock their doors. When we moved into the Deerfield house 16 years ago I bought 3 deadbolts because my insurance agent said there would be a small discount if we had deadbolts. 16 years later those deadbolts are still in the barn in their original packages.
Although desperate for housing we decide to pass on the Baptist house and take our chances that some other house will be found. The temporary house that we live in which was so depressing at first seems like a haven now. It feels less confined than others we have seen. The non-secure fence between our house and the pastor’s house is like a breath of fresh air. We can go through the gate and knock on the door and visit with Bryan and Eve or just chat over the fence. It is said that "good fences make good neighbors", but Maseru fences means no neighbors.
The
Language Barrier
In America they haven’t used it
for years
Our first experience with the language barrier
has nothing to do with Sesotho, or Zulu or Afrikaans or any one
of the many languages spoken here which are foreign to an
American’s ear. It has to do with strangest language of all,
i.e. English. In My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins bemoans the fact
that the English don’t learn to speak their native language.
("The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. In
America they haven’t used it for years".) Boy, did he
get that right.
Of Reed Wain and Tomato Sauce
Here we are, on a plane to Africa with all our
luggage stowed and our children settled. We are both excited and
exhausted and decide to celebrate with a drink. The blond blue
eyed stewardess comes by and I order a rum and coke and Lois asks
for wine. "Reed wain?" says the stewardess. Huh? What
on earth is she saying? (Make sure you roll that ‘R’
for about 5 minutes in the beginning of that phrase.)
"Please, I just want a glass of wine", says Lois.
"Reed wain?", repeats the stewardess. You get that
awful feeling when someone is trying to tell you something
important and expects a response but you haven’t a clue what
they are saying. Your brain goes into this high speed decipher
mode and you run through thousands of combinations of things that
it might be, all the while smiling like an idiot. Finally, a
light goes on (RED WINE!!!) and you want to jump around and kiss
people like they do on the TV game shows when they get an answer.
"No, wheat wain – uh, ah, I mean white wine,
please" and the crisis passes.
We are in the Holiday Inn in Joburg. We are tired and hungry. There is a mall across the street. Von and I make our way across in search of something to eat. Min Joo wants a hot dog with kethcup. We find a "Take Away" place (that’s South African for Take Out) and I order. When the hot dog arrives I pay by holding out my hand with coins and letting the counter girl take the fee. "*&^&%^&%&" , says she. This accent is worse than the stewardess. I don’t even have a piece I can put through my decipher machine. I ignore her comment. "Do you have ketchup", says I. "*%*&^oss", says she. "Ketchup", says I louder. "Tom&**&^ soss?", says she. Recognizable syllables are emerging from the gibberish. The decipher cortex is working hard. That was ‘something sauce’, I think. "Ketchup. Do you have any ketchup", says I slowly, loudly, and stupidly. This girl is bright. She holds up a variety of little condiment packets and lets me choose. I pick the familiar red ketchup packet. It does not say Ketchup. It says "Tomato Sauce". She gives me a smile that seems to say ‘Stupid American’. (Bim me oop, Scawty – I canna take anna more).
You want a WHAT!But I Don’t Want a Donkey
Afrikaans is spoken through much of the
surrounding area. The Afrikaaners are the descendants of the
Dutch settlers. This area was the Afrikaaner stronghold and many
of the surrounding towns have Afrikaans as the primary language.
Signs and notices will be in Afrikaans and road signs will be in
both English and Afrikaans. It is much like going to Quebec where
French is the primary language and English is secondary.
We go to the small town of Ladybrand just 13 miles from our home in Maseru. We buy something in a store and the clerk, who speaks a version of English with a Germanic accent says "Buy a Donkey" when she hands us the package. I don’t really need a donkey at the moment so I say "thanks, another time maybe". All of the Basotho clerks in the store say "thank you" in English but the white clerks invariably tell us to ‘Buy a Donkey". Finally, we ask a clerk in a chemist shop (pharmacy) what it means. It means ‘thank you very much’. We ask her to write it - Baie Dankie. Now you can tell your friends you know some Afrikaans. Aren’t these newsletters so educational.
Mission WorkMost of her day is taken up with reading and meetings as she learns what the organization is all about. She has met with the Executive Committee of the board which consists of representatives of the different churches that make up CHAL. She has met with some government agencies and with some grant giving agencies (e.g. Unicef).
Budgets are very tight, in some ways. In other areas there is grant money which is difficult to spend because of requirements put on CHAL by the granting agency or because CHAL does not have the facilities to manage it fully. They might, for example, expect CHAL to monitor certain things at the receiving hospital or clinic, however, the grant may explicitly bar use of funds for travel or for non-medical equipment. In the U.S., of course, information would be passed between hospital and managing agency via a variety of ways – visits, mail, fax, phone, etc. Well, if hospital has no phone and the only way to get there is by plane and you are required to monitor the situation and there is no money in the budget to travel and you cannot buy communications equipment, it becomes difficult to meet the grant requirements.
This place reminds me of the old west where you sent mail along with someone who was going out in the general direction of the recipient. It might get passed to someone else who might eventually deliver it. CHAL keeps a table with mail on it, and if someone is going to the recipient clinic or if someone from the clinic is in Maseru they will take back the mail (and deliver any incoming mail)
Lois is flying out to a remote hospital in Tabellong next Monday. She is hitching a ride with a group that is going out to inspect a fencing project funded by the Irish for a remote hospital run by the Lesotho Evangelical Church (LEC) . A fencing project? It seems that the folks are paid in cash – there is no bank. If you pay them by check they would have to travel many miles on foot to reach a bank. Therefore, they are paid in cash and everyone knows that the hospital will have a great deal of cash on or about payday. There have been numerous robberies and even murder. They are hoping to build a Security Fence around the hospital. And where do the Irish fit in? The Irish give a surprising amount of money to Lesotho and in particular to projects of the Lesotho Evangelical Church. (The LEC is also one of the partners of the UCC/Disciples of Christ (our mission). In fact, most of the UCC/Disciples missionaries in Lesotho are connected with the LEC. Lois is one of the few working with a different group (CHAL)). Last week the Irish Prime Minister was in town. The US ambassador was on her way to welcome him when we stopped at the embassy to register. I’m sure we are next on her list.
MAF – Mission Aviation
Fellowship
There are many missionary groups serving in
Africa. The missionary community here is pretty close knit and we
have met a number of missionaries serving with organizations
other than the UCC. One of the groups is the Mission Aviation
Fellowship (MAF). We have met three families from this
organization. They have invited us to dinner and have brought us
dinner during our first two weeks as we had not gotten groceries
and dishes yet. In fact, our temporary house is the home of a MAF
mechanic who is on furlough.
MAF consists of pilots and mechanics that are sent to various parts of the world to fly medical personnel and supplies into remote areas or to transport patients out of remote areas to hospitals and clinics. They do not have medical staff of their own but work closely with other mission groups, governments, and NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) to provide the transport services needed. Although their primary mission is medical transport they often provide transport for other functions when they can. The trip to Tabellong that Lois is taking is an example. The delegation going out to review the fence project did not fill the airplane so Lois was invited along since they know she needs to begin visiting CHAL hospitals. However, if an emergency (code 1) occurs she may get bumped for a patient and may be left in never-never land until another plane goes out that way and gets her. Never a dull moment in general.
Pz’s
Mission
"What mission?" you say. Hey, we are
all missionaries here even if we aren’t official. We each
have a role. Lois’s, of course, is medical administration.
The MAF guys do medical transport. Our neighbors, Pastor Bryan
and Eve bring joy of spirit to the people by bringing them the
Word of the Lord.
I, also, bring the joy of words to the people. Okay, I don’t actually do that the way Pastor Bryan does. I spread my joy when I go pick up Lois. I try to greet the receptionist and the people in the lobby in Sesotho. You should see the joy. They smile and laugh and people who were just sitting there suddenly are talking to each other and smiling. It seems that all I have to do is open my mouth and say anything in Sesotho and everyone smiles and laughs, "Wena O se pela shwang?" How are you. (Way-na oo sa pay-la zwang) – We have no sound for the beginning of the last word and I sure as shootin’ can’t say it right. "Ke pela hantle". I am well.
pz does the Lord's work at the Maseru Sun Hotel pool
TIA – This Is Africa
TIA. This is a common response to all things
frustrating in Africa. It means, ‘This is Africa!’ In
Lesotho, the one thing you have to learn to deal with is standing
in queues for long periods of time. (They don’t stand in
lines here – they stand in queues). I have had to adjust
downward my expectations of what I can accomplish in a day.
One thing you have to get used to is that although there is a postal service this is not a postal economy. There is no guarantee that your check will arrive at the destination. If it does, there is no guarantee that it will be credited properly and, before you know it, your water or electricity or whatever is turned off. So you go to the water department, bank, electric company or whatever and you wait in queues. What is really frustrating is that you often have to wait in multiple queues. For example, you wait in line to register the car (I was with Dave when he did this for our loaner car). When you get there you turn in the forms and then have to wait in another queue to get temporary plates. What I would give for a "soccer mom chair".
When we got our temporary plates we went to this room where a guy makes the license plates and adds the blue paint to the embossed numbers and letters. Outside the room, underneath the stairwell is a disorganized pile of old license plates. There is an overpowering paint smell and the plate maker wears a mask, presumably to protect his lungs from the fumes. I doubt it protects very much – the fumes are making me dizzy. Dave gives him a form and asks him about getting plates and he says come back next week. This is also very much typical here – come back whenever. Dave asks him if he couldn’t just get a sticker to put over the old date on the plate (like we do in the states). He says he is out of stickers. As we leave with our temporary plates Dave comments that the guy always says he is out of stickers. TIA
My special moment here is the queues at the border. Most people crossing a border have to present their passports and get it stamped each time they cross. The American-Canadian border is a more open border. So too, is the Lesotho-South African Border. Almost, that is. It is possible here to get a six month pass that allows you to cross the border without having to wait in the queue to get your passport stamped. To qualify for a pass you must have some valid reason to cross the border a couple of times a week. However, to get your pass you have to wait on queues at two different windows – I’ll call them A and B. After waiting in the queue at window A, you show your passports and receive a form for the border pass. You fill out the required info and then you stand in the queue for window B. At window B, you turn in your completed forms and are told to come back tomorrow. This process took me 2 hours of waiting in the hot sun (in long pants of course). The next day you get on the queue for window A. When you get there, instead of picking up new forms, you tell the officer that you turned in the forms the previous day. He looks through a pile of forms and hands you your form with an official stamp on it and a scrawled signature. You now get back on Queue B. When you reach the window you turn in your passport and your completed and STAMPED forms and move to the side. After another significant wait, your passport appears at the window with the border pass and the person standing at the window handing in his forms picks it up and hands it to you. Today’s time – 2.5 hours. TIA
Don’t ask me why they can’t have the forms sitting out where you can just pick them up and maybe have a slot where you can deposit them and have a single queue that you get on the next day. The whole waiting problem is exacerbated by the fact that half of Maseru cuts ahead of you in line. The way you do that is to see a friend who is already in line and go over and chat with him or her. Maybe you walk away for a while and then come back a little later. You do this a few times and finally you just stay there like it was your position in line all along. TIA
LOOK
RIGHT – Drive Left
Okay folks, place your bets. How long before pz
cracks up the car. The one closest to the time without going over
wins the prize. In case you didn’t know, they drive on the
left here. As an American, you drive or walk around repeating the
sacred mantra "Look right – drive left". Forget
that and some one will cream you as you blithely pull out into a
cross street that appears clear because you’re looking the
wrong way.
We do have a car. It’s a loaner but we can at least get around. We have been talking to Tony, the owner of Terry’s Spares and Repairs (Pty) Ltd. (Don’t know what the Pty is, but who cares). Tony is of Lebonese descent but spent most of his life in Africa, and like everyone around here, he is multilingual (but he doesn’t speak Lebanese as he is from Tanzania). Tony sells used cars. ("Good price – good car. You’ll like it". ) He comes recommended by David Owen who brings his car there for repairs. In fact, in the last week David has brought his car there for the same problem at least 4 times.
We saw some cars that we liked but we have not straightened out our banking situation yet. So we have been driving around in the loaner car. The car sat in our driveway the first few days as Roxi and Dave drove us everywhere. Dave is incredible. He drives in places and through crowds that I could not deal with in my own car back home on the right side of the road. Even Roxi says that Dave’s driving is special. Look Right – Drive Left.
After the grace period was over, Roxi took me out driving. Look Right – Drive Left. We went on roads that were not crowded and with Roxi’s patience I began to get more comfortable. We drove again together another day and then I was on my own. I am getting better. I have driven to Ladybrand by myself but have not ventured downtown yet. Look Right – Drive Left.
It’s not just the driving on the opposite side of the road that is disconcerting. Almost everything is backwards. You have to look over your left shoulder when backing up. I kept turning right and bonking my nose on the window. And as I slow to make I turn I often turn on my windshield wipers rather than my turn signal since these, also, are reversed. Look Right – Drive Left.
Lois has complemented me a number of times recently on how flexible I am - Learning to drive on the opposite side of the road, dealing with queues at the border, and driving to Ladybrand on my own. I have written these things down to present in divorce court which is probably where we will end up after I attempt to teach her to drive here. I don’t think I’ll have Roxi’s patience. It’s okay though – I’m sure we will be back home before we ever get off the queue for filing the divorce papers at several windows on several days. TIA
My special moment here is when we drove from Joburg to Lesotho for the first time. The countryside is beautiful, but jet lag and lack of sleep catch up to me and I begin to nod off. I’m sitting next to Dave in what is normally the drivers seat for us. Suddenly I wake up and realize that we are driving down the center of the road towing a trailer packed with boxes, passing a car that has moved to the shoulder, while an oncoming car has moved to the opposite shoulder so we can all pass each other at a 120 kilometers per hour. As I pound the floor where the break petal should be and I search for the steering wheel that is not in front of me where it should be, I come fully awake and realize sheepishly that David is doing all of this while talking on his cell phone with one hand, searching the glove box for a pen with his other and driving with his knees. It’s all over in a moment and I nonchalantly push my heart back down my throat while hoping for a rest stop with a clean bathroom.
It Tastes Just Like Chicken – that
is if it’s WAKE UP CHICKEN
The
Twilight Zone
Well, we haven’t had anything exotic like
zebra or monkey, but I can tell you about the trip to the grocery
store. Roxi and David took us to Ladybrand to do our first
grocery shopping and it was quite an experience. It’s a very
modern store with scanners at the checkout, wide aisles, deli
departments, large bottles of Coca-Cola at the end of an aisle,
etc. This is going to be a piece of cake, I thought. Then we
began to go down the aisles looking for the things we needed and
it gradually dawned on us that things were not quite right.
"I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore, Toto."
(Rod Serling – "On an ordinary day in a seemingly ordinary town, two ordinary Americans go to purchase their groceries. But their surface perception of a normal shopping experience exists side by side with the bizarre at the deeper psychic depths of the mind. Lois and pz believe they have entered a grocery store, but in reality they have entered ––– the twilight zone." Music – "doo doo doo doo etc." (Okay, you young folk – it was before your time – ask your parents)
We walk around in a store peering closely at the items like we had never seen the inside of a grocery store before. Just about everything is packaged differently. Now this may not seem like a big deal – but you would be surprised. Like milk in a carton in a non-refrigerated section of the store. How does it keep from spoiling. (I don’t want to know.) We don’t buy milk here. Later, Roxi takes us to a store where they fill the containers for you from a stainless steel vat of fresh milk.
Of course, there are brand names which are familiar but they don’t quite look right when packaged differently. And there are local brands which are unfamiliar, sometimes containing things that are unrecognizable. It doesn’t help that many items are labeled in Afrikaan’s on one side and English on the other. (Whatever you do, Lois, don’t buy a donkey.)
Chutney
Anyone?
How about condiments. 90% of the condiment
section is a massive wall of Chutney. All kinds of Chutney –
at least a thousand flavors. Indian chutney, peach chutney, curry
chutney – You can get it hot, or mild or fruity or whatever.
But where on earth is the ketchup – oh yeah – they call
it tomato sauce. Get a jar. Look – there’s mustard. At
least it says mustard and is in the familiar yellow plastic
squeeze jar. We grab that, too. (But when I try to use it on my
ham sandwich the next day, it comes out red – Look closely
at the label now – it’s TOMATO FLAVORED –
aaaiiieeeeee!!!!!!).
We begin to get disoriented and start having feelings of floating and of vertigo – and then !!!!! Like in a dream there is a jar of mayonnaise – Not something that looks like mayonnaise or something with a strange brand name – but Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. And there --- Look! See! It’s Old El Paso Salsa. And suddenly the dizziness lessens and we feel like we can do this!
What is that in Dollars Per
Pound, Please
Off to the Deli – There are the smiling
apronned personnel standing in front of their meat slicers and
behind the counter filled with meat. The counter is filled with
long loaves of something that one might think is baloney. I move
quickly to the end of the counter where it looks like they have a
small selection of normal deli items – ham, turkey, roast
beef – all the while wondering why they eat so much baloney
(which takes up fully 75% of the counter).
"Can I help, you", (Or something equivalent to that) says the young man behind the counter. I begin to look at the prices preparing myself to do the conversion from Rands to dollars in my head, but then I realize the measures are in Kilograms – not pounds. Gack! I need to do a double conversion to get to dollars per pound. "May I help you", he says again. Do I divide by 2.2 and multiply by 6? No, wait – multiply by 2.2 and divide by 6. Is that right, or do I multiply by both? "Do you want something", he says. I don’t want him to think I’m the village idiot, so I quickly pick one of the conversions and order some ham. After an interminable time at the slicer he hands me practically the whole *&^% pig. He knows for sure I’m the village idiot – a yankee idiot, to boot.
Oh well, we all like ham. I do a better job on the turkey and call it quits. I am afraid of the baloneys – and with good reason. I casually glance at the descriptions on the labels. Whatever, the base meat is – it ain’t baloney. This is flavored meat. Pepper flavor, curry flavor, onion flavor – you name it. All kinds of flavors. At least a thousand kinds. Maybe they flavor it with Chutney. It’s probably not bad. I’ll bet it tastes just like chicken. I’ll have to try it some time. Not this time though.
Next comes the butcher section – It mostly looks normal with meat packaged in styrofoam and plastic wrap. Let’s see – what do they have – Well there is lamb, lamb, lamb and lamb. Lamb chops, leg of lamb, lamb bits etc. A bit of pork and some more lamb and a bit of beef. Where is Monty Python in all this.
They dined on Mince and Slices
of Quince which they ate with a Runcible Spoon
Then there is mince. Mince to you homebodies is
hamburger. They don’t have hamburger helper in this store.
They have something called Mince Mate. The first time I passed it
I hadn’t a clue as to what it was – but my brain was on
overload and it didn’t register. After the trip to the
butcher section we pass the aisle with the Mince Mate and (DING)
the light goes on and I grab a box.
Later in the week Roxi tells us a story about their first trip into South Africa. The people they were to visit lived in a remote area and the Owen’s called them from the Joburg airport. Figuring that their hosts might want something from Joburg that they could not get where they lived, Roxi offered to pick up anything they wanted. Their hosts asked for "mints and fresh milk". The Owen’s could only find the cartons of non-refrigerated milk at the grocery. They bought some of that and a nice box of chocolate mints. They offered this gift to the hostess upon arriving and the hostess held the items up to her husband and declared – "Look they brought us mints and fresh milk". This was done presumably to warn the host not to embarrass the guests. Roxi said that it was some months later when they were living (and shopping) on their own that all of a sudden the light went on in her head and she realized that the milk she brought was hardly fresh and the hosts wanted mince, not mints. Talk about a gracious host.
What
do they feed fish
Well, we do not buy any chicken at the grocery
store. Roxi has warned us that almost all chicken that you buy,
even in restaurants, has a fishy taste because they feed the
chickens fish meal. The Owens take us to a chicken shop in
Ladybrand where all they sell is chicken – chickens which
have not been fed fish meal. It’s called WAKE UP CHICKEN.
The packages are marked "No Fish Flavor". Roxi says
it’s the only place locally that you can get the non-fish
chicken. What a country!!! Even the chicken doesn’t taste
like chicken. Oi vay!!
It wasn’t a particularly big shopping trip and we weren’t out all that long, but our brains have overloaded and can’t really take it all in. We are exhausted. And if you actually read this entire letter you are probably overloaded and exhausted, too. So goodbye for now.
Sala Hantle (Sala Hant-lay - Stay Well),
Pz, Lois and the girls
updated
1/30/2000
Ferguson and Pezzano Home Page
*Scatterlings of Africa-I got this from the title of a song by
Johnny Clegg.
I heard it on the Rain Main Soundtrack. (Okay - I spelled it
wrong on the original page)