I am finding it difficult to believe that it is already May! Time is passing very quickly. I suppose part of that is the busy schedule that I have kept in the last few weeks. The week is spent prepping and teaching, helping with sports and visiting the primary school and then the weekends are busy with trips to town, and various sporting days. Last weekend we had sports days on both Saturday and Sunday because we started three hours late on Saturday and had to continue the games on Sunday. Our boys qualified in soccer for the next round, and the girls netball team also qualified. Net ball is a cross between handball and basketball, and is quite exciting to watch. Yesterday I went with the Form "E"s on their field trip to Maseru. We were to leave at 630am, but left instead at 830pm...and so it goes. We encountered many problems along the way as there are many traffic police roadblocks and our taxis were missing a permit of some kind (I think they were outside of their district)so we were detained for quite some time. The other taxi was overloaded by two people and so each time we knew there was a roadblock (drivers communicate with each othere by flashing their lights if there is a roadblock) we stopped and two people got out and walked or took another smaller taxi (a car, called a 4 plus 1) past the roadblock. Anyway- we didn't arrive until 12:30pm, missing our first appointment, which was at 9am. The fieldtrip was part of the commerce class, and so they were seeing differnt modes of transport and we also visited the Central Bank. We saw airplanes at the military base and then went to the Central Bank. On the way to the bank we stopped and ordered some meat to be cooked for us at one of the butcheries, as we had not yet had lunch. At the Bank we were served refreshments, which were well received as it was by this time 4 pm. There were also flush toilets and soap, which I enjoyed very much! We took our "lunch" to the Ariculture College and were given a room in which to serve and eat. We headed home around 5:30pm. The main attraction of the taxis is the music that they play. A pounding track of dance music was played for the entire trip and when I finally went to bed my ears were ringing as if I had spend the day in a dance club! The students love it though, and it is difficult not be caught up in their enthusiasm.

I had a very good session at the Primary school this week. I am helping with grade 5 English and also now in grade 6 and 7, teaching poetry. I am enjoy this very much and love the ladies who teach at this school. As I think I have said before, this is a very poor school. I was asked to come this week to take some pictures as some of the boys had received new trousers and shirts from a Help Lesotho grant. I was relieved to see many of the little boys whom had priviously been wearing very old and worn clothing now in new grey pants and white shirts. They were very pleased with themselves also. The week before when I arrived, i found that afternoon classes had been cancelled as the school had had a drive to collect goods to give to others. They called this "Education for all" and the students had gone out into the community and asked for donations of candles, matches, soap, clothing and other basic needs. All of the goods were divided up and were distributed to 84 families within the school. EAch family received one candle and two boxes of matches, or one bar of soap, and two boxes of matches. While I was chatting with the principal, 'M'e Anna, she told me that it was important that the children learn how to help each other. "You Canadians, " she said with a smile, " help us too much. We need to learn to help ourselves." They plan to repeat this collection each month.

Well, I need to get going as I am going to meet up with the school for the next round of sports.

Have a great week!