As some of you may know, my dear friend Amanda followed her desire to help people and joined the Peace Corps. She departed for her “sub-saharan” country this past November. She is now an English Literature teacher in Mohale’s Hoek in southwestern Lesotho. (Yes, it’s that country inside South Africa.) Prince Harry was recently there doing some goodwill work of some kind. Unfortunately, Amanda didn’t meet him, but she tells me that they used the same pit latrine. ;o)
Anyhow, I wanted to share a little excerpt from her most recent letter as it had Sylvain and I smiling and laughing…
…Well, first let me tell you about little Tholang. He is super tiny, but the smartest kid in the class. He is a thinker, too, and creative (which is very rare here). He puts “Dr. Tholang” at the top of all his papers, and he actually writes creative sentences. For a subjunctive exercise, he wrote, “If I were as tall as an electric pole, I would be very sad.” Well, apparently little Tholang got extra creative when he wrote a letter to the headmaster, claiming that he was from the Ministry of Education, and the ministry was investigating claims that students were being forced to dig damms all day instead of attend classes…I just figured that we need to work Tholong a little bit harder and give him better outlets for his creativity. The headmaster considered it an act of subversion against the administration of the school, and is in the process of expelling him…
Okay, we weren’t smiling and laughing about the expulsion from school part. But the letter that he had written on “behalf” of the Ministry of Education was too funny.
Yes, Amanda is getting along fine with the teaching and adapting to life without modern conveniences. Talk about an experience!?