After a pretty unsuccessful day of painting on Monday, culminating in a notoriously scary bird produced by me on one of the walls of the TTL Centre, I expected Tuesday to be just as bad. However, it turned out to be productive.
As always, having eaten breakfast and finished a Sesotho lesson, we headed to our project sites. This time, I went to the construction site where 3 pit latrines had to be dug out next to the school. After getting the pickaxes and shovels ready, we started digging one hole for all 3. Removing the topsoil turned out to be pretty easy; however, after that, we reached boulders and rocks that were almost impossible to pick apart. Despite that, we managed to make significant progress and deepen the hole by about 2 feet.
During the work process, we met several Basotho people. The first one, who was already at the construction site working, tried to teach us a few expressions in Sesotho(none of which I memorized ). The second one was a boy from a nearby village who was showing off his recently caught fish. As it turned out, the fish was still alive, so we assumed he must have caught it in a nearby river.
After finishing work, we came back to meet a representative of SolidarMed - a non-governmental organization providing medical services to remote villages in Lesotho. During that meeting, we discussed many caveats and issues people in Lesotho face when it comes to accessing healthcare. Some of them are mountainous terrain, a lack of road infrastructure, and scattered villages. We also talked a lot about child healthcare and education, which was so starkly different from what the US has.
Concluding, today was one of the coolest days of our stay in Lesotho. I had so much fun working with my fellow students on the pit latrine project, especially knowing that all this effort is not put in vain but for the betterment of the children of Lesotho.