Mamathe High School

So we are still in TY getting gradually more and more sick of the food in Blue Mountain Inn. Having finished in Peka on Wednesday midday we move to Mamathe High School for the afternoon and the rest of the week. It's still just me, Dallan and Dee plugging away but we have found with the smaller group we are actually more focussed in our teaching and it's surprisingly easier. Mamathe is nearer to Teyateyaneng than Peka and the principle is the wife of a minister so it is well funded with good facilities and they have had computers here before ours so we are expecting a good class. When I say good facilities I really don't mean that in the snese of what you would associate with good facilities in Ireland, the fact that this is the first school we have encountered with a flushing toilet instead of a hole in the ground called a drop toilet is my new definition of good facilities! Not taking away anything from any of the holes in the ground I've encountered of course, some of them were lovely! The class turn out to be really nice despite another slightly rough starting period, I really think that we are quite as on top of things and the class aren't quite as receptive when we start on a Wednesday afternoon. Maybe its the fact that we have to rush travelling to the school, the emotion of having just said goodbye to another group that we had grown to enjoy earlier that day or just the class not wanting to start midway through the day. But eventually we get into our stride and its just like all the other schools. I even get to take out three of the more advanced pupils, Elizabeth, Bell and Pelu to teach them some HTML and web design. The web design stuff is a good idea that Des usually does with the quicker moving students to make a little webpage for the school. It's pretty basic but just showing people that its not that difficult to learn these skills and that computers don't bite is one of the reasons we're over here.On Thursday we celebrated Jonas' birthday. Simon from SchoolNet Lesotho joined us for dinner in the restaurant of our hotel and kindly provided some champagne to mark the occasion. I've never had red sparkling wine before but this trip has thrown up some suprises and that was definitely one of them. Not as bad as you'd imagine. There was also a present for Jonas and a belated present for Joe from everyone at SchoolNet which was really nice of them. So a night of adult beverages followed and eventually we all headed back to the rooms with a few cans to continue on. After a short while Dallan wandered into the room as he does and announced that there was smoke coming from our room and was this normal... the lads had managed to cover the radiator with their clothes and melt the entire plastic side of it. After drunkenly trying to air out the room we eventually settled down to sleep with the fumes of melted plastic lingering in our noses, not too sure if it was the booze or the carbon monoxide poisoning but myself, Joe and Dallan were out like a light.We finished up on Friday in Mamathe, another 19 students graduated and we presented the school with an Irish flag. Each school we visit gets a flag when we leave, its a nice touch but the significance of a national flag seems lost on some Basotho people. Since independece in 1966 the flag has changed so much that the Basotho don't really identify with it. Still it makes for a great group picture with three white Irish faces surrounded by our classmates and friends with the Irish flag. After the graduation we went down to one of our students houses, his name is Jacob and he is an Indian man living over in Lesotho. He wanted the wikipedia put on his computer at home so we all decided to head down and have a gawp at his place. His children are back in India studying and his wife is back there visiting them so I think he was a little bit lonely and enjoyed the company, after looking through loads of his family photos we headed off to drop into TY and wander round the town. I was taken a little bit aback when wandering around a shop (called Dunn's... not the same one as in Ireland) I bumped into Jacob. Something wasn't working on the computer and he had followed us into town to ask us about it! Seeing as I was officially on my weekend I gave him a quick answer and headed off. So we are half way through our month over here and it really doesn't feel like it at all. We have all been running on adrenalin and the thrill of the new experiences up until now and are looking forward to a weekend spent hiking and relaxing at Malealea Lodge up the mountains. Tuesday is the King's birthday and a national holiday over here so we have only one school next week and a nice short week to look forward to after Malealea in Mafateng.