Peace Corps Pets!

Relatively speaking, I feel like I handle the anxieties of living in a rural village in a developing country fairly well. The honest, and occasionally intimidating, truth is that I'm living in a place where there are no Emergency Services... Your thatch roof gets hit by lightning? Grab a bucket of water! You get into a car accident? I hope you were in a middle seat in the back! The public khombi breaks down on a dirt road? Better start walking! Despite Peace Corps' extensive "emergency preparedness" strategies and protocols, there is actually very little on-the-spot support in stressful "emergency" situations when you live in a rural village. Yet all this, I seem to take in stride (or willful ignorance, depending on your perspective)... Until the apparent emergency involves my pet.

This post is about Peace Corps Pets... We love them, rely on them, suffer criticism for them, and often, we wind up in a whole lot of heart-ache.

I have always owned and lived around animals, so when I joined Peace Corps Lesotho (and discovered it was common for PCVs here to have a cat, or even dog in some cases), I was all on-board. While I knew it was risky, I also knew the emotional and psychological benefits, for me personally, would be well worth it... And I was right.

Beginning my very first day in Ha Selomo, I have shared my rondaval with my little white cat, Pina (meaning "song" in Sesotho)... And in those first few days, weeks, and even months at site, she was an incredibly important part of my ability to cope with my new situation and surroundings. On lonely nights, she was around to keep me company. After weekends away, when I wasn't ready to return to the isolation of village, she was my motivation to come home. In attempts to make new Basotho friends, she was an easy conversation starter, breaking the silence with her presence. I can't possibly overstate how important she has been to my service.

Yet Pina's status as an important asset to my happiness, also makes her an incredible liability to my emotional health. On two occasions, she's gotten seriously and mysteriously sick: As a kitten, she must have fallen and temporarily bruised her spine. For a very scary 3-4 days, she lost all coordination and her ability to balance. She stumbled drunkenly around my rondaval, until she eventually lost the ability to use her back legs entirely- resorting to dragging the dead weight of her back legs around, much to my horror. On a second occasion, she ingested some kind of poison, and spent 12+ hours very sick, yowling, and in pain. She recovered both times...But each incident left me terrified and nearly crippled with worry for multiple sleepless nights. I can't possibly explain the terror and misery that sets in when you think you're trapped in a tiny rondaval, in the middle of nowhere, with a potentially dying animal. There's no back up plan. No help. No chance to lessen pain and suffering. No one. Silence. Just you and a very sick animal. You don't sleep... Just dreading that when you wake up, you'll have to clean up a tiny dead body. It's scary.

And the threats to the well-being of Peace Corps pets aren't always things you can control. For as much as the Basotho are kind, generous, and empathetic people with humans, they can also be very uncaring towards animals. This is a shocking adjustment for most Americans, for whom Fido isn't just a dog but rather a bonafide member of the family, complete with his own special food, dishes, toys, and bed. I could not possibly overstate how much the American prediliction to coddle and care for animals absolutely baffles Basotho. It's a MAJOR cultural difference, and one of the first hard-knock lessons PCVs typically learn about this country. Basotho do not treat animals like they have feelings or emotions. They are tools. They serve a purpose, and if they don't, then they aren't worth feeding. This may sound harsh to a westerner, but after living in Lesotho for several years, I've come to understand it... This is a country where children starve and funerals are more common than weddings. To Basotho the idea that Americans would give perfectly good food to an animal while somewhere in the world (or even on our own city street corners) a HUMAN is suffering isn't just stupid, it's nearly criminal. The American preference for animals, in their eyes, often seems heartless and unimaginable. Why would you feed an animal when you could feed a child? 

Unfortunately this, combined with a penchant for jealousy, means that our much beloved Peace Corps pets are often at the mercy of people who think and treat animals very differently than we would wish. It's tragic, but I have had MANY PCV friends loose their animals to malicious acts of violence or careless poinsonings. It's beyond heartbreaking every time. Such as the time when my good friend, Amanda had her dog stoned to death by a group of local herd boys in her village, just for sport. Other friends have had their cats killed because their strange and unimaginable habit of allowing the cat in their house illicited suspicions of witchcraft. Other times, host families unknowingly and carelessly poison animals with rat traps and pesticides, simply because it doesn't occur to people to care or ask WHY an animal dies. It's a tough environment for animals in Lesotho. 

So I count myself incredibly lucky that the children and my host family have always accepted my strange American pet owning habits, and have adopted Piña as part of the neighborhood. EVERYONE in the areas knows that she is katz ea 'Me Limpho or 'Me Limpho's cat. And I love that now my kids enjoy petting her and come running whenever some little boy decides it'll be fun to throw rocks at her or chase her. Through me, they've come to treat her like an animal deserving of kindness and basic needs, like food and water. They see now that she is useful.... I've never had a snake, scorpion, or live rodent in my house ( although she does quite frequently grace me with dead ones! Ha!). And that seems, to me, to be yet another's small victory in promoting cultural understanding and difference. 

Owning a pet in Lesotho can be a big risk, but, in my case, the emotional and psychological benefits have been worth all the worry. :) 

With Love from Lesotho... Mary Beth 

What makes me thankful...

Sixteen months ago, 30 strangers arrived in Lesotho to become teachers. Last week, 23 of them gathered to celebrate their Peace Corps Mid-Service at Ka Pitseng Hotel.

It was an exciting, occasionally emotional, but absolutely joyful three days. A chance to see friends from all over Lesotho- fellow volunteers we hadn't seen since we left our Pre-Service Training over a year ago. It was a time to reflect. Celebrate successes. Mourn the departure of the seven PCVs and friends who weren't with us in Lesotho anymore. Look back on how far we'd come, and how much we still had yet to accomplish at our schools and in our communities. And for me, besides being an incredible reunion with friends, it was a chance to take stock of what I'd given and gained.

On our second afternoon together, the Peace Corps Staff lead us through an activity to reflect on why we'd joined Peace Corps and where we were emotionally at this point in our service. They hung signs on the walls, each one with a different mentality or "emotional state" written on it. For example, there was an "I'm can't wait to leave Lesotho!" sign, an "I'm doing exactly what I came here to do" sign, and an "I'm excited about the next year... Whatever happens, happens." sign. They gave us a moment to reflect, and then asked everyone to go and stand beneath the sign that best represents their current state-of-mind, 16 months into Peace Corps service.

The answers were varied... Some surprising, some absolutely predictable. I, shockingly enough, found myself alone beneath my sign. My sign read, "I feel that I am receiving more than I am giving from this experience." Now, there were obviously other signs that I also, in part, identified with- such as the more popularly chosen sign that read, "I can see the results of my work here." But I felt confident that I'd made the right choice...

That's because when I think about my life in Lesotho, I feel overwhelmed by an immediate sense of intense gratitude for this experience. Gratitude for the beautiful, amazing, Basotho friends in my life, who have made my life so much richer with their diverse perspectives and unique worldview. Thankful for the overwhelming kindness and hospitality I receive from people, who receive nothing in return from helping me. And yes... I am sometimes lucky enough to glimpse the positive results of my work here. But to be honest, I don't see those results every day. In fact, it's a rare day when I see true change, that I have created. That's, in part, what makes this work so emotionally difficult and frustrating... I have to trust that the returns on my investment will be there, 10 or 20 years down the road, when I'm already onto a new adventure in a new part of the world.

But the statement, "I feel that I am receiving more than I am giving from this experience." really struck a cord with me. It was true for me in a way the others weren't, not just because it was true... But because it's true EVERY single day of my life here. It's not just true on the easy days. Even when I have a horrible, awful, frustrating day that makes me want to curl up under the covers and never come out... I still feel grateful. On the days when I feel vulnerable and unsafe, and would give anything to transport myself to the fluffy red, couches in my parent's living room, where my mom and I would curl up with a big bowl of popcorn and a movie... I still feel thankful. When I get so angry at my inability to make my students understand a basic concept, and become absolutely convinced they'll never learn... I still know there's something powerful about this experience.

Every single day of this life makes me a stronger, richer (in the metaphorical sense, definitely not the monetary one! Ha!), and more grace-filled person... And THAT makes me grateful.

With Love from Lesotho... -Mary E.