Hamba Kahle, I Can't!

Well, I apologize that its been so long since I wrote anything. First I didn't have much to say, and then too many things happened to have time to write about it all. Typical, I guess. I'm still going to cut this short though, because winter has hit Nkomazi, and quite frankly my fingers are too cold to type anything much with any degree of accuracy for any decent length of time.

First of all then: Lots and lots of photos are up at Snapfish. So if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I should be in the clear. There are shots of Lesotho, Steenbok, Likusasa Letfu camp -- which just finished last week -- and family members in Steenbok being adorable. Enjoy. (And try to guess which one I'm going to turn into a tattoo...)

Second -- Camp!! Last week, from Sunday to Friday was the second annual Likusasa Letfu girl's empowerment and HIV education camp. (It's a long title, I know, but we had a lot to talk about). Everything went amazingly well, and was much less stressful than last year. It was really a pleasure to see my teacher's begin to take a leading, in-charge sort of role this year, instead of sort of being in the background like last year. We talked a lot about how we could keep things going throughout the year, as well as how to carry on next year even when I'm gone. I'm really happy.

Third -- a wedding! I promise to write more about this later too, because it was really interesting, but the very first thing I did the day after spending a week at camp was get right by up and go to a wedding with some of my teachers and friends from the village. It was great, we all got into taxis and drove to the next village over, where guests and community members and everybody else inbetween poured into a huge community hall for an african-western hybrid wedding, all to the beat of jesus/techno/house/choral-pop. I'll write more next week when I come to town and my fingers are thawed, because I just can't do it justice now -- but it was all great. Myself, one of my favorite teachers, and a couple of other ladies snuck over to the bar, where they saw me drink alcohol for the first time. ("How!! Nomvula!! You are drinking a beer!"), and then we headed to Naas for a beer and Cheese Puff run, followed by aimless driving around yelling at people we saw out the windows. No lie.

Its been a fantastic couple of weeks. And in just four more -- I'm all through! I can't even fathom it right now, but July 25th is my farewell function and by August 15th I'll have left Steenbok for the last time. Frostbite is inducing brevity, and so all I can say to that is: Wow.