My Own Little Comedy Routine…

Two years ago, I sat in my one room apartment in Virginia Beach writing my Peace Corps application and longingly imagining what my life in some far corner of the world might be like. I had thousands of images and thoughts… Most of them looked somewhat like the inspiring Peace Corps ads plastered around college campuses across America: They depict a clean, laughing volunteer embracing little South American kids in a big hug, or a loving teacher smiling from a chalkboard at the front of some dilapidated classroom. Some days, albeit very rarely, that is my life. But that is NOT the whole story…

The whole story is that 99.9% of the time, my life in Lesotho is more like a very bad comedy routine that I’m just stumbling through, much to the amusement of my Basotho friends, family, and neighbors.

Like one weekend last year, when I was enjoying a typical lazy Saturday morning in bed, reading a book. As I sipped my daily precious cup of instant coffee, I felt something crunchy on my tongue… I froze, too scared to swallow. I knew EXACTLY what was about to happen. I stuck out my tongue, and picked something off of it: a curled up dead spider. I assume it had fallen from my grass roof, into my coffee. Needless to say, I didn’t drink coffee for a week.

Or how about the late Friday evening, when I returned to village, starving and exhausted after a long week away at a Peace Corps Training. I was rummaging through my food cabinet by candle light when I stumbled upon a half empty container of bacon bits! “Thank you, Mom!” I thought, as I threw them on top of some hastily boiled potatoes for dinner.

The next afternoon, I decided to use the last of my precious bacon bits to make a quick egg salad. I boiled the last 2 eggs in my house, added to chopped onions, and mayonnaise. Finally, I emptied the remaining bacon bits into the bowl. “Noooooooo!!!” I gasped, as I watched giant, fuzzy green chunks of former bacon fall into my perfectly edible egg salad. After a moment, of momentary gagging at the recollection of last nights dinner in the dark, I collected myself. “Come on now. Man up.” I thought, “No point in wasting perfectly good eggs over a little hairy mold!” My fomer-self, sitting on her comfortable couch in Virginia Beach, would have been utterly ashamed to see me now… But onward I plunged. I just plucked as much of those hairy bacon bits out as possible, and then grabbed a spoon and mixed everything else together well. :)

And of course there’s the ever-so-classic story of the night I stepped on a dead rat that my cat had left on the floor of my darkened rondaval… I knew the instant I felt the hairy, squishy warmth, crunch beneath my foot that this was NOT the Peace Corps fantasy I’d imagined when I hit “send” on my online application. I screamed, took two steps in an effort to escape, only to have my OTHER foot land in something chunky and wet… I knew even before I gathered my wits, through tears and gagging in disgust, that one foot was covered in dead rat and the other in cat vomit.

And for Peace Corps Volunteers, the laughable slogan “Shit happens” isn’t a cliche. It’s life. Seriously. Shit REALLY does just happen sometimes. And normally, when it does, you’re stuck on the very back seat of a crammed taxi, between two giant bo-‘Me, on some dirt road to nowhere in the middle of the Maluti Mountains. But to our credit, this is EXACTLY why Peace Corps Volunteers make the BEST travel companions. We have a strict “no judgment” policy because EVERYBODY has been there before.

My own “diarrhea on public transport” moment happened while I was traveling home from a Peace Corps Committee meeting, near the capitol last year. And when, in retrospect, I think about this story and laugh, I just thank God that I was travelling with my PCV friend, Alyssa.

Alyssa and I had gotten about 15 minutes outside of the capitol, with about 30 more minutes to go before we reached our friend, Beth’s village, when the inevitable panic that accompanies stomach pains set in. “Alyssa… I REALLY don’t feel well.” I said, giving her a ‘you know what I mean’ look. “My stomach is killing me. I don’t know if I can make it.” I said, starting to panic. But thank God for Alyssa, and her never-ending sarcasm and unflappable sense of humor. She turned to me in the back seat of that sweating hot, over-stuffed taxi, and looked me straight in the eye, in a completely uncharacteristic, dead serious, moment. “Okay… That’s totally okay. You just say the word and I will stop this WHOLE taxi.” she said with a stern look. “And if you can’t wait, then don’t you even worry about it, girl… It’s okay if you shit your pants. I gotch ya back, woman!” she added, with a laugh.

Despite my distress, I couldn’t help but chuckle at her blatant honesty. It really did make me feel better. But ten minutes later, I knew we’d reached a critical moment… And to Alyssa’s credit, she stayed true to her word. “Alyssa- I’ve got to get off this taxi NOW!” I said urgently. “No problem! I’ve got this!”… “Ummm! EXCUSE ME, bo-Ntate!” she bellowed from the back seat, over the blaring rhythm of famu music and Basotho villagers. “Re hloka ho teoha HONA joale!” (We need to get off RIGHT now!) With little to no fanfare, she forged an awkward, bumbling path out of the taxi- stepping over peoples’ laps, juggling luggage, and muttering “Ke soabile!” (Sorry!) “Phephi, ‘Me” (Sorry, mother!) and “Kea leboha, Ntate” (Thanks, father!) all the way. I just barely made it to a local shop, where a local Indian shopkeeper took pity on me and gave me the key to his latrine. After a painful few minutes, we finally hit the road again, but our trip included two more pits stops before we finally reached Beth’s village. There I spent most of my night ensconced in her latrine, much to the concern of her very worried host mother (who probably thought the lekhooa (white) visitor was going to die on her watch.) By the end of Alyssa’s and my trip, I was miserable and just happy to be home. And Alyssa was a trooper the whole way… “Look, girl… Sometimes shit just happens.” :)

With Love from Lesotho… –Mary E.