We started with 30 Americans. A group of strangers that became a family… The Peace Corps Lesotho “ED 13’s”. It wasn’t always easy. In fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in a hotel in South Africa where all the PCVs in Lesotho were evacuated to more than a week ago, after a military coup d’etat in Maseru. We should have been at our “Close of Service” or COS Conference this weekend. It should’ve been a celebration. A rare chance to indulge at Maliba Lodge in Ts’ehlanyane National Park. A chance to relax… To sit up late at night drinking wine and reminiscing about that time Amanda and I got stranded in a remote village in Botswana or the way that Ntate Clement, our Ed APCD, always looks so fly in his floral shirts and bowler hat. It should’ve been a time for inside jokes and shared memories. A time for laughter and tearful goodbyes.
But the emotional rollercoaster of Peace Corps leaves no rest for the weary...Instead we sit in empty hotel rooms, praying we’ll get a chance to return to our host families, friends, and students in Lesotho. We’re just hoping for some semblance of closure to our service now. A chance to say goodbye to the people and country we’ve come to love over the last two years.
It’s been a wild ride… You name it, I feel like we’ve done it. Overwhelming laughter and joy, all night parties, and vacations that took us to the highest peaks of Lesotho and the coasts of southern Africa alike. For two years, we’ve shared birthdays and holidays… Attempting to imbue special days and events the with comfort and meaning of home, in a place that often seems a world away from everything we know and love. We’ve gotten stuck on dirt roads together… Cried in frustration at the unfairness of a taxi that never shows up. But then again, we’ve also been there for the encouraging pat on the back, and the look of camaraderie that says, “You know we have to do this because we don’t have any choice” before we finally pull ourselves up off the ground, put our packs back on, and start walking. We’ve been insulted, misunderstood, and humiliated. Shared in the tiny victories of a host brother that can now read “The Cat In The Hat” or a female student who has the courage to recite a poem in front of the entire school. We’ve often been hungry, tired, and subsequently overwhelmingly irritated at each other. There has occasionally been yelling or angry silences… And then a hug to make up. We are family, after all. We’ve been confused… Tried to laugh at the “On any given day I only understand about 10% of what goes on around here!” jokes, but also knowing that they hide a very real frustration that we all experience on a daily basis. We get through it in the end because we all share a common experience. We were often separated by mountains, never-ending dirt roads, and torturous public transportation… But between What’s App messages, emails, and the occasional desperate phone call to rant, we managed to hold onto the bond we began in Pre-Service Training (PST). It was a wild, crazy, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime adventure… And at the end of it, 22 of us made it through two years to our “Close of Service Conference” together.
And today we said the first goodbye… Not to a volunteer, but to our guide. Our Director of Programming and Training (DPT), Eric, left Peace Corps Lesotho today. He arrived in Lesotho shortly before us, and we will follow him back to the States in just a few short months. From our very first days of training in Lesotho, he made us into a family by example. He was “Uncle Eric,” the middle-of-the-night phone call you make when there are no taxis and you’re stranded outside of village. His was the home that always had a hot shower and a warm dinner for PCVs just “passing through” Maseru. He will be missed as we finish our service without him.
It was a difficult goodbye to say in the midst of an evacuation and scrambled together COS Conference, when so much seems uncertain. I know it was harder for him to leave than for us to see him go. But it was the beginning of the end… The beginning of the goodbyes. A scary new horizon, and also an exciting start to a new adventure.
I’ll always be thankful I was a Lesotho Ed’ 13!
With Love from South Africa… Mary E.
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