PSBH

It's 6:25 a.m., and I'm sitting outside of Motebang Hospital in Leribe using the wireless internet that was actually funded by one of our programs. The hospital is only a 10 min walk from the hotel where I've been for the past three days, so I figured I get my internet fix before the last day of the workshop begins....I look pretty funny though, a random white woman with her Mac sitting on a bench outside the Admin building.

So PSBH has been going very well. There are about 50 participants who are all basically having a really good time and being very interactive. In fact, my favorite part of this whole workshop is when we are in plenary sessions. Before any work is started, everyone sings and dances in this really amazing harmony. I took some videos with my camera that I'll try to post when I get to Maseru. I'm so into it. I could listen to the people here sing all day. It's so beautiful.

As for the workshop itself, I've been busying running around dealing with logistics, sitting in the plenaries, and co-facilitating the small group sessions. In addition, I've been working with Bill (the director of LeBoHA who is in country for the month of March) to finish up some things for a big IFC meeting we have on Mon and Wed next week. So Wednesday, I worked from 6 a.m. - 10 p.m. Yesterday wasn't as bad, only 6:15 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. It's great having Bill here, though, because I've gotten so many questions answered and gotten so much accomplished that was hard to do without consulting him.

The Mountain View Hotel where we're staying is pretty nice, although they don't have showers, only a bathtub with water that is either too hot or too cold. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to the intern house tonight. They are feeding us really well here. When I say "well" I mean a lot. The food is really heavy (typical of Basotho food). For breakfast, it's actually very English, beans, sausage, toast, fried eggs. There is cereal and yogurt, too, at least. Lunch and dinner are very much the same. Lots of vegetables with butter, braised meat (I'm actually very fond of this, it's really good), rice, papa, heavily dressed salad. There was a corn chowder last night that was unbelievably good. Probably had 5000 calories per tablespoon, but it was so tasty.

Today is the last day of the workshop. And then at 2 p.m. we bring back participants from the Oct workshop for their "graduation ceremony" where they share the projects they've been working on, their accomplishments and challenges, etc. Then it's back to Maseru.

Tomorrow, we're hoping to go hiking again at the Merrimetsi Hiking Trails in SA. It's been pretty rainy for the past two days, so we'll have to wake up and see. There's a group, Fethi Tabet, coming to Maseru tomorrow night that we may also go see at the Maseru Sun Casino.

That's they story. I'll be back on internet regularly this weekend.