My trip through Heathrow was smooth despite my trepidation regarding the chaos of the week before and the ensuing back log of Christmas travellers to take care of. Restaurant staffers in the airport told of running out of food and drink, and dealing with the crazy stress levels of everyone involved.
My seat mate on the eleven hour flight from London to Johannesberg- and this time ,for the first time, I was in the middle -was an economist from India working in New York who had travelled to see his family in Delhi and was now doing another marathon to visit his sister in Cape Town. There really are people out there crisscrossing the globe even more than I do.
Five of us arrived at the Joberg airport on Saturday early a.m. of New Years Eve. We were met by a private van and then spent an hour lost in that city. Eventually we hit the velds of the South African Free State and drove five hours through green open grasslands to the Lesotho Border.We stopped in a sketchy border town and all paraded into the liquor store, cognisant that it was New Years Eve.
The first two days in Lesotho were very restful and we all felt lazy and under
employed. We spent New Years Eve in the Leribe Hotel, and after a Maluti beer and cheese drenched pizza, all fell asleep at the table. The weekend was filled with hiking and touring about in the Toyota truck. Definitely we were being spoiled, as that use of gas is rare- but Peg wanted us to visit the Pitseng Centre and get the lay of the land-and she even took two days off work with us !
The visit to the Leadership Centre and its smaller Support Centre were rather intimidating for me. Both the work yet to be done to finish the building and the interiors, not to mention the landscaping- and the responsibility for the 34 little girls who are to move in here next week to start school- are overwhelming. Not to be daunted, a list of priorities was made and the phone started humming first thing after the New Year holiday was over. There are faucets that were purchased in August that are missing, water coming into some of the tiled rooms in the low corners, grills to paint and lights to install. Overall, the buildings are beautiful and quiet unlike anything else in the area- including the glass block construction in the stairwells. It will be beautiful when it is done. We now have 10 staff working in 2 rooms with a meeting room 15X 20 feet. They will move by the end of January into a facility that has an office per two people, a library, staff accommodation and a meeting room 20 X 40 with attached cafeteria. The Grannies won’t know what hit them. Ask me about the sponsor, the Graff Foundation, later. Quite a fantastic story. They are the diamond merchants who found Help Lesotho.
Today, I worked in the office with old friends. I opened sponsor letters and Christmas presents, read them, logged them and sorted them by school. Boy do I have tips for the people at home on how to make all this process easier on this side. I was also assigned the task of drawing 8 diagrams of ovaries and the uterus, calling to discuss the insurance we needed to house the girls when they move in and pack the craft bags for the Leadership Camp. The gang at the HL office moved almost everything over to the St Pauls School last week except perishables. We will move the food to the Camp tomorrow. I am on registration as the 250 participants arrive, morning snack detail and dinner brigade. Not in the kitchen much this year, just enough to have a bit of fun with the kitchen ladies and indulge my need to chop and produce food. The rest of the time, I will be attending sessions taught by other people and evaluating them and the kids responses. We take our bags and stay six days !
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