The following blog post was written on the evening of 6 July. Due to technological restrictions it was posted at a later date.
Yesterday our bus/van blew a tire, which was not that big of a deal because we had a spare. However, the stop to repair the tire was not open today (nothing is open on Sunday), so when we were on our way to Thaba Bosiu and another tire blew…well, that became a problem. We were on some back roads, seriously back roads with large rocks and we must have gone over one of them hard enough to puncture the tire.
It happens that today is the coldest day since we arrived, I don’t think the sun came out at all and frost remained on the ground. When we all piled off of the bus it became clear that the only way to stay warm would be to start walking, figuring the bus could pick us up once one of the rear tires (there are two on each side in the back) was moved to replace the busted front tire.
We drew a lot of attention on our walk, as the road we were on is not yet completed and the people are probably not used to large numbers (10 or so) of white people walking by. At one point I was offered a donkey and I had to try to explain that I don’t have a place for a donkey (big sorry to Eric if he would have wanted the donkey to ride to work).
Allison and I tried to give some kids stickers, but they were a little nervous about us and made me set them on the ground…but then they didn’t know what they were so I had to demonstrate on Allison how to make them stick (now there are a bunch of kids in rural Lesotho wearing Mickey stickers.
When the bus picked us up the adventure was not over yet…we still had the unfinished bridge to cross, which went ok. Then some kids were waving us not to go down this road, but we did anyway only to discover that it ended when a giant truck blocking the way and large piles of gravel all the side for miles. Overall, construction in Lesotho appears to happen even more slowly than in the Midwest.
Yesterday our bus/van blew a tire, which was not that big of a deal because we had a spare. However, the stop to repair the tire was not open today (nothing is open on Sunday), so when we were on our way to Thaba Bosiu and another tire blew…well, that became a problem. We were on some back roads, seriously back roads with large rocks and we must have gone over one of them hard enough to puncture the tire.
It happens that today is the coldest day since we arrived, I don’t think the sun came out at all and frost remained on the ground. When we all piled off of the bus it became clear that the only way to stay warm would be to start walking, figuring the bus could pick us up once one of the rear tires (there are two on each side in the back) was moved to replace the busted front tire.
We drew a lot of attention on our walk, as the road we were on is not yet completed and the people are probably not used to large numbers (10 or so) of white people walking by. At one point I was offered a donkey and I had to try to explain that I don’t have a place for a donkey (big sorry to Eric if he would have wanted the donkey to ride to work).
Allison and I tried to give some kids stickers, but they were a little nervous about us and made me set them on the ground…but then they didn’t know what they were so I had to demonstrate on Allison how to make them stick (now there are a bunch of kids in rural Lesotho wearing Mickey stickers.
When the bus picked us up the adventure was not over yet…we still had the unfinished bridge to cross, which went ok. Then some kids were waving us not to go down this road, but we did anyway only to discover that it ended when a giant truck blocking the way and large piles of gravel all the side for miles. Overall, construction in Lesotho appears to happen even more slowly than in the Midwest.
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