Peace Corps Post Script: Words (Matsoe)

Khotsi: Full and satisfied after eating. Mokhotsi: Friend, with "mo" being a prefix indicating a person. The person who makes you feel complete and satisfied.

It's because I'm studying for the GRE and filling my head with words whose future usefulness I doubt. Words like "truculent", "pusillanimous", "compendium" and "patina." When I'm reading (on book #110 in Lesotho) I sometimes see words I know or realize are on the face of one of the flash cards and then feel slightly vindicated. Otherwise I only feel that I'm working on learning two languages - and neither of them very well. When people ask what I'm doing with my flash cards I tell them about the test and knowing more English (sehooa) words. "But you do not know them all? Ach. How many are there?!"

Our library is up and running with enough words to fill over 1000 books -- an inventory of which took me 48 lined pages in a notebook and several days of cross-eyed afternoons. It's the value of words that always makes me think (nahana); because some are so powerful and others worth less than the paper they're printed on. While making the book inventory, I heard an incredible story on the BCC of Lasantha Wickramatunga, a Sri Lankan journalist silenced by assassination. Yet before he died - an event he correctly predicted a few days prior and did not try to escape - he wrote a letter to his newspaper's readers and the President, his childhood friend and the man he suspected of planning his own eminent murder. Those words made me stop and grab my shortwave radio, sitting with it on my lap and trying to find the place on the dial with the least static for the duration of its reading. (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/01/letter-from-the.html)

Worthless words? The insistence by Basotho to have a committee for every project and group. It only really exists on paper but the names and roles are all listed in a lined notebook in careful, deliberate handwriting. The same with sub-committees, too, having another set of president, vp, secretary, treasurer, etc and somehow managing the mind-boggling feat of being even more useless and unproductive. Masekhampu showed me the list of committee members for the spinning group (Tsohang Basotho, "rise up, Basotho"; as in get up, wake up, do something... I love this name) and I laughed out loud. These women have worked for months without designating a committee but thank the stars we have one now... Yet how ridiculous are the words in a Dr. Seuss book? I was undertaking said inventory when some kids came in and picked up a book. All of a sudden I hear from behind me: "Wan feesh... too feesh... rrred feesh.... blooo feesh..." Those words have never taken on such meaning.

And words that aren't sufficient, never understood in their meaning. I arrived here and told people "2 years." Now, I say "June" and the 2 reactions are so juxtaposed that it's comical. "No! June? It is too soon! It is almost now!" But where were you for my first year? Why didn't we work then instead of trying to cram it all into the last 4 months? My words - Sesotho and English - fail me here. "Yes, June. June I go home." In Sesotho, your home never changes; your home is where you were born and grew up. If you live elsewhere, no matter how long, the phrase "I'm going home" means you're going to that place you're from. All the places after this are houses (mapeng) or village names. And that translates clearly for me.

Some photos to describe what my limited vocab cannot:

first, a series to show the effect of 36 straight hours of rain on my trip down to Maseru (this is one of my taxi's to/from Ramabanta):