Short Skirt and a Long Jacket

Ever since I arrived in Lesotho, I’ve been approached weekly by women who voice their high opinion of my clothing and accessories with demands like, “You must give your handbag.” No introduction, no direct compliment;  just the demand. I have yet to figure out the most appropriate response. Usually, I say something like, “Oh, you like my handbag?” or I try to joke with “Should I give you my pants right now-now?” or, more often, I return with a plain “thank you.” I mean, how exactly does one respond to an imperative statement like that?

Part of the problem is that I’m not even sure what these women actually mean. Is this a way of paying a compliment? Or, do they truly expect or want me to hand over the identified item? Is there some expectation that, as an expat, I am supposed to leave behind my stuff? I hear this demand on a weekly basis and every time, I am taken aback by the brazenness of the encounter.

So, since I’m at a loss for what to say, I’m taking suggestions for witty and biting comebacks. Anyone?

 

It’s been a hard day’s night

It’s been a tough week for me, as I’ve come face to face with the harsh realities of life in resource-limited settings. It started last week when I learned a whole lot about how governments figure out what quantities of HIV/AIDS drugs to procure for their children. So many of the tools that developed country government use — things like patient data, consumption data, health information management systems, national ID numbers — don’t exist in many African countries. And while this doesn’t sound like such a big deal, look at it this way: if an HIV-positive baby isn’t able to access the medicines she needs because her government couldn’t forecast its national medicine requirements properly, then that baby is probably going to die.

Now, part of my job is to help increase the number of local health clinics that offer pediatric HIV/AIDS services to its clients. At the moment, many people here need to walk for hours to get to a hospital that can care for their HIV positive children because the much closer health clinic isn’t equipped to do so. But, lemme ask you this — how can I in good conscience do my job, if there’s a pretty darn good chance that these clinics will run out of children’s HIV/AIDS drugs? How can my work be ethical? You cannot start a child on a cocktail of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), only to switch them to another cocktail because the original regimen stocked out. That child also cannot just stop taking her drugs and start up again when the drugs are back in stock. There are so many consequences to these actions, including the risk that the child develops a resistance to the drugs and has to start on her “last resort” drugs, which means she probably doesn’t have much longer to live. And the more individuals who develop drug resistance, the more society as a whole becomes resistant. In America, you have a bajillion different drug cocktails to choose from, so building up resistance just means you can switch to another then another then another drug regimen.  In Lesotho, you essentially have a “first line” and a “second line” regimen. That’s it. So if your nation’s population of 1.8 million is developing resistance to your first line regimen, you’re screwed. Lesotho has to take it so seriously that if any doctor wants to move a patient to the second line regimen, the request needs the approval of a national committee.

It could very well be argued that it is unethical to begin a child on AIDS treatment if you know that child won’t be able to access her drugs on a regular basis. So, if I’m supposed to be increasing the number of clinics that can initiate a child on treatment, and I know that most existing clinics are running out of children’s drugs, what do I do?

 

Harold the Goat Update!

I’ve learned the true story behind Harold the Red Horned Goat!

Turns out, my neighbor is a Filipino TV/cable repair man. He also happens to be the man who repairs the King of Lesotho’s TV and cable — at any hour day or night that the King calls. Of course, since it’s the King, my neighbor doesn’t actually charge him for the service. But the King is a good guy and wanted to compensate and thank him — so he sent over a goat! How fantastic is that?!

Harold comes from royalty! He bleated at me today when I came home for lunch. I think we’re becoming friends.

Unfortunately for Harold, his owner’s birthday is fast approaching ….

 

The Lady V Had a Little Goat …

Just a quick update on the goat — I came home for lunch and the goat was still there. I left after lunch and the goat was still there, standing in the ditch. I came home from work and the goat was still there.

And then I brought the goat a tupperware bowl filled with water because it didn’t look like it had drank anything all day.

I can’t believe I watered a strange goat.

I think I will name him Harold.

 

She’s Just Down the Line

My neighbor had a gift tied next to his driveway this morning.

It looked at me with scary eyes.

 

Jean Factory Toxic Waste Plagues Lesotho

Lesotho makes it to the CBS Evening News on 2 Aug … but not in a good way. Gap and Levi co-star in Lesotho’s big break into mainstream news:

There’s a disturbing report today of dangerous waste being dumped by a plant in Africa which manufactures blue jeans for American consumers. Both Gap and Levi Strauss are investigating the alleged dumping at the plant in Lesotho in southern Africa, as CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports.

On the outskirts of Maseru, dozens of children – the poorest of the poor – scavenge at a huge municipal dump for anything useful – anything they can sell. A months-long investigation by the London Sunday Times found tons of illegally dumped waste from garment manufacturers including suppliers of major denim manufacturers Levi Strauss and Gap.

Full story: Jean Factory Toxic Waste Plagues Lesotho.

 

Car Crashed, Almost Mugged, Then Propositioned

The play-by-play of last night’s series of events … it’s long-ish but totally worth the read. I promise.

6:19pm: I start to turn right onto a street to drop off my co-worker, Kitty, at home.

6:20 pm: All of a sudden a white mini-van/passenger bus comes screaming out from behind me, attempts to pass me on the right and crashes into my right front bumper.

6:21 pm: Kitty jumps out of the car to run toward the van that hit me, while I frantically call my office’s safety team and the police. Busy signal.

6:22 pm: Still can’t get through to the police.

6:23 pm: Busy signal.

6:30 pm: The other driver and Kitty come walking back to my car. The Crazy Driver stoops down and picks up the VW logo that was lying on the road and that used to sit in my car’s front grill. Pieces of my bumper, grill, and headlamp are scattered along the street.

6:31 pm: Busy signal

6:32 pm: Finally get through to the police! They give me another phone number to call. I call it. They give me yet another number to call. I call that one. The man tells me officers are on their way from a location about 10 minutes from where I am.

6:34 pm: I’m getting nervous that it’s only me, my female co-worker, the male alcohol-sodden driver and his friend on a dark-ish street corner. They seem nice, but still. I start calling my male friends and reach Kick and his wife Q, who immediately jump into their car and head my way.

6:40 pm: I try calling the police again. Busy signal. As I lower the phone from my ear, this other guy comes up to me (don’t know where he came from) and makes a grab for my phone! I scream and tackle him. He turns his back towards me, still trying to grab the phone, so with my free hand, I try to beat the crap out of his head. I’m yanking on his jacket, his clothes, anything to help give me leverage to pull him to the ground. He slips, we both crash to the ground and I’m still wrestling him to get the phone back.

6:41 pm: I hear Kitty yell, “V, he doesn’t have the phone, let him go! Let him go!” A few seconds later, I’m releasing his jacket and he runs away. I see my phone sort of under the car. I scramble down for it. And the guy comes back to steal the phone again! This time, I’m really caught off-guard since my back was towards him, so he manages to get to the phone before I do. I grab the back of his pants (I’m still on the ground) to pull him down but he breaks free. As he runs up the street, we’re yelling “stop him! Stop him!” Kitty and Crazy Driver sprint after him and the neighbors come out to aid in the pursuit. I get up with the intention of starting my car to run him down, when Kick and Q pull up. Before they stop, Kick half opens the door and I yell “THAT MOTHERFUCKER STOLE MY PHONE – GET HIM!!!!!” (sorry, mom).

6:42 pm: Q screeches away in the car and races after the thief. She pulls out in front of him to block, Kick jumps out of the car and starts chasing the thief back down the road. The guy is totally stuck, so he tosses the phone, continues to run and gets cornered by the neighbors. Not really sure what happened to him after that.

6:45 pm: We’re all standing and chatting, laughing at the crazy bad movie scene that just took place. I have my phone tightly gripped in my hand and hidden away in my jacket pocket. Still no police.

6:47 pm: Two more friends who were supposed to meet Kick and Q for dinner show up to join the festivities. Crazy Driver asks if I’m married and whether any of these men are my husband, so he can sort things out with him. I say no and refrain from punching him in the face. He asks Kick if he can speak to him privately, to which Kick says, “Whatever you have to say, you can say to me right here.” Yeah!

7:00 pm: I call the police again. Dispatch tells me the officers have said they’re on their way. Crazy Driver wants to know if he can take me out sometime. Yes, that’s right. The man who hit my car is now trying to hit on me. My roommate and Brown Horse arrive and inform me that sometimes the police don’t have transport so they have to walk. Crazy Driver looks around at this bevy of expats and dazedly wonders, “How many are you? And where are you all from?”

7:01 pm: I call the police again and offer a ride to the officers. Dispatch tells me it’s okay, they have a car.

7:30 pm: Still no police.

7:45 pm: Hungry, cold and miserable, I give up on the police. I get the name, address, mobile number and vehicle registration of Crazy Driver, who by now has sobered up a bit and freely admits that it was his fault. We agree to get in touch in the morning to get estimates on the damage.

7:50 pm: Chinese food, beer, more friends, and then more beer.

1 am: Fall asleep.

I wish I could tell you that’s the end. But this is the story that keeps on giving.

This morning, my office’s finance manager tells me to go to the station and file a report. This way, there’s an official document that states Crazy Driver was at fault and in case he tries to weasel his way out of paying for the damage, I can take him to court. Which sounds terribly unappealing but I go to the police station anyway. We call Crazy Driver and have him come to the station. About 40 minutes later, he shows up. The police tell me that we have to go back to the scene of the accident – but the police don’t have transport. I think I stood in silent for about 15 seconds before answering.

Since my car was left at my co-worker’s house, I couldn’t give them a ride. The only thing left to do was to get into the white van that hit my car last night and ride with Crazy Driver back to the scene of the accident.

So there I was.

Riding in the very vehicle driven by the very driver who crashed into me last night. It also happened to be the first time I’ve ridden in a Lesotho taxi vans. Go figure.

The police took another 40 minutes to listen to both sides of the story, draw a very detailed map of the scene, and inspect the damage to both vehicles. Somewhere in there, Crazy Driver tried to ask me out again, then told me that I’d change my mind if he made love to me, asked my co-worker whether I was single and was told by her that I’m a tough woman and he probably didn’t want to mess with me. In the end, Crazy Driver was charged with negligent and reckless driving, in violation of Note 8.2, Section ii, Section 3.9346.92.84543, Code A3. Something like that.

Now, originally, I had named my car Whitney – and my friend, who bought the same car, named her car Bobby. We thought the names were funny at first. But now my car is acting like a crackhead. Since I got her, I’ve had to replace the alternator, the ignition switch, and a spare tire. Now the bumper needs to be fixed and I’m pretty sure the clutch needs to be replaced. All this makes me think that I need to lay hands on the car, pray over her, and baptize her with a new name. Something like Santa Maria …

 

Of All the Places in the Entire Freakin’ Continent …

…. I end up living in the coldest spot. I’m not kidding. See the blue spot that indicates temps between -10 and 0 degrees Celsius in the map below? Yeah, that’s where I live. The only dot on the entire CONTINENT of Africa where there are subzero temperatures, morning frost on the ground, and no central heating.

The cold temperatures are definitely amplified by the lack of insulation in houses, central heating, and good firewood. I lit the first fire in my fireplace last night and while I was proud to have eventually gotten a good blaze going, the wood here just doesn’t burn very well. It kind of instantly turns into smoldering embers rather than flame up nicely.

I saw the snow up close and personal too — a couple of weeks ago, I took the scariest flight of my life on a small prop plane out to the mountainous region of Qacha’s Nek. Or, rather, I attempted to take a plane there. We stopped halfway to drop people off at the Semonkong region and decided it was too windy to attempt the second half of the flight. Our very able pilot from Mission Aviation Fellowship did his best to give us a smooth flight but the high winds battered our little plane up in the air – I’ve never had so many non-rollercoaster-related stomach-dropping moments. At one point, we had to get above the clouds and the pilot banked HARD to the right and then shot straight up through a break in the clouds. omg omg omg. It was exhilarating but entirely terrifying. But the views! I couldn’t resist snapping a few shots while holding on for dear life … the snow-covered mountains were dazzlingly gorgeous!

The Mountain Kingdom

That's the airstrip we landed on

The beautiful Semonkong waterfall, which I've only seen from the sky

More pics here. Despite the beauty of the snow, I find myself yearning for the sunny and warm beaches of Mozambique, just a hop, skip and 8-hour drive away … hmmm …

 

Taking My Inner Dork to the Bank

**Disclaimer: The following information reflects the analysis and research of The Lady V, who fully and completely acknowledges the dork inside her.**

You learn a lot when you live outside your home country of the United States. For example, you learn that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is not nearly as ubiquitous as KFC. You learn to drive on the left side of the road. You learn how to differentiate between a power outage and when you’ve run out of pre-paid electricity. But most importantly, you learn to pay attention to currency exchange rates.

Unfortunately for me, the U.S. dollar has been dropping in value against the South African rand (which is what the Lesotho maluti is pegged to) and I am paid in U.S. dollars. This means that my salary gets deposited into my U.S. bank account in U.S. dollars and, in order to spend my money in Lesotho, I have to withdraw in rand. Every time the dollar depreciates against the rand, I essentially get a pay cut. For example, when I first arrived, I could withdraw R4000 and would see $403 deducted from my account. Today, I see $510 deducted from my account.

So, in light of the diminishing value of my salary in Lesotho, I’ve been searching for ways to minimize this pain. Some organizations pay their expats a sort of monthly allowance to offset this risk, but of course, mine does not. And, sadly, I have neither the means nor knowledge to participate in arbitrage or true foreign exchange hedging (my MBA international finance professors would be ashamed, I know). In my search for alternative solutions, I began by looking at exchange rate patterns to determine which day of the week would yield the best rate. The chart below shows the ZAR to USD interbank conversion rate over the past three months and the pink boxes indicate weekends – Friday through Monday. Turns out, the best days to exchange or withdraw money are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. You can tell from the chart that the rate tends to go against the dollar Fridays-Mondays.

Here’s what that means in real-life terms. The maximum per transaction amount that I’m allowed here is R4000. Let’s say I withdrew R4000 every Sunday for the past three months. According to the exchange rate on those days, I would have seen $6,223 deducted from my account. But if I had taken the R4000 out on Wednesdays instead, I would only have seen $6,082 removed. And this in a country whose currency is relatively stable! Now, I should add that I tried this analysis for the first six months of the year, but the exchange rate has dropped so much since January, that it didn’t seem to be reflective of my current needs. Then again, maybe this theory doesn’t bear out in the long run and it all just evens out in the end. But I like the idea of my theory — so I’ll be keeping an eye on this trend in the coming months.

I gladly welcome any other ideas of how I might hedge my FX risk — anyone??

 

Questions

I’m wrapping up my fifth month in Lesotho and am just now feeling like I understand the work I’m supposed to be doing and am becoming effective at it. This past week has been a hectic one, as I’ve been charting out my Q3 and Q4 workplan, but finally, finally, I feel like I’m getting somewhere. It’s frustrating that it’s taken five months to get to this point and I wish I had done this kind of planning three months ago … but at the same time, I don’t think I knew nearly enough back then to do it. Still not sure I do. To give you an idea of what’s slowed me down, here are a few questions that have been posed to me or that shed some light on what it’s like to work in HIV/AIDS in a resource-constrained environment that still bears a stigma towards this plague:

• What do you say to an HIV-positive woman who says her husband will beat her if she tells him of her status?
• Is it even possible to combat HIV/AIDS when the local radio stations run advertisements for herbal drug that cure AIDS?
• How do you handle a situation when the only generic drug manufacturer of a certain children’s drug decides to stop producing and it means that a 3 yr old child now has to take 5 tablets at a time, twice a day?
• When an infant’s HIV/AIDS test result can take up to four months to be returned, at which point that baby has probably died, where do you start?
• How can you provide life-prolonging ARV drugs to children when they can’t even afford the transportation to their nearest health clinic? Or when they have to walk 4 hours to the clinic? Or when the river floods and can’t be crossed for a month?
• What value do you put on life when the majority of your weekends are spent at funerals and in cemeteries that stretch for a mile along the road?

I know I don’t have all the answers and I probably never will. But five months on, I know there are solutions, imperfect though they may be.