Wil, 30 July 2010
Lesotho , Maseru 19°

Health Care

DOCTOR ADAMS



SOLUTIONS TO LADIES PROBLEMS: CHEAPEST CURES!

IS YOUR HUSBAND HAVING AN AFFAIR YOU SUSPECT
IS HE WEAK IN BED
IS HE STINGY WITH MONEY
IS THERE SOMEBODY JEALOUS WITH YOUR RELATIONSHIP
DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED & THINGS ARE DELAYING
BODY ILLNESS
DO YOU HAVE BAD PERIOD PAINS, LOTS OF BLOOD OR NO BLOOD AT ALL
DO YOU HAVE VAGINAL PROBLEMS
DO YOU HAVE ANY STOMACH PAINS PLUS ALL OLD PEOPLE SICKNESS LIKE JOINTS, BACK, CHEST
NB: DOCTOR ALWAYS WORKS ON BAD LUCK, COURT CASES, KID EMPLOYMENT & MANY MORE!!!

PENIS EXPERT – MONEY BACK GUARANTEEE – ONLY 7 DAY CHEAPER TREATMENT
I HAVE YOUR LAST SOLUTION TRY ME

TRY MY NEW STEAMING METHOD (BIOCELL HERB METHOD)
NO PILLS NEEDED JUST BRING YOUR PENIS TO ME
I WILL WORK ON YOUR PENIS AND YOU WILL LEAVE WITH SURPRISE INCLUDING:
1. POWER OF WEAK PENIS STRONGER AND HARDER
2. GIVES FEELING FOR SEX MENTALLY
3. STOPS QUICK EJACULATION-QUICK SPERMING
4. POWER FOR HAVING LONG SEX – MANY ROUNDS
5. SIZE EXPANSION TALL OR LARGER
NO SIDE EFFECTS (OR ALLERGIES) 100% NATURAL TREATMENT


CELL 073 9228319

ASTROLOGER TRADITIONAL

DOCTOR Y.B. MUSA

Check through water and mirror

1. Make penis big & strong
2. Control early ejaculation; erection
3. Reduce vagina
4. Bring back lost lover
5. Bad luck problems
6. Protect your properties
7. We catch tokoloshe & chase them away
8. Pregnancy problems
9. HIV and AIDS symptoms
10. Blood pressure High and Low
11. Court cases
12. Recover lost property promotion at work
13. Lotto & Casino Specialist
14. Customer Attraction

Find the doctor at:
Oxford Building
2nd floor, room no. 15
Next to Lesotho High School
Maseru
Cell 59606811

As far as health care is concerned we have ample choice here. And there are some intriguing choices, especially the ‘no pills – just bring your penis ‘ option, leaves room for investigation. Unfortunately, I cannot get Mel, who likes to stay attached to his penis, to try it out, not even for the sake of literary research.

However, looking at all the options, we decided on Willie’s clinic the other day. Willie’s clinic is a private set-up run by African doctors with an excellent reputation, much better quality than the local state hospital (abandon all hope ye who enter here), the Queen Elizabeth II. Peace Corps sends its volunteers there, and Peace Corps is not known for risk-taking behaviour. And if Peace Corps trusts Willie, then why not we, especially when the alternative, going across the border to Ladybrand on a Friday afternoon was so little appealing.

Ever since the winter started in earnest here, Lesotho has been one of the most polluted countries in the world. The mountain we look on from our kitchen window is covered with a thick blanket of smog that thins a bit during the day wahen the sun warms up and the fires are extinguished, and thickens again after 4 when the frost sets in. We smell it too as out air conditioning, which doubles as the heating system now sucks it in. Most people here are still dependent on wood, coal, peat and dung for their heating and it is incredibly polluting.

My juvenile delinquents have per group their own little stove, a big tin with holes for oxygen punched in it, in which they burn coal. They drag it with them to all their classrooms. And of course they want the windows closed as that will only carry (cold) fresh air into the classroom. Those kids sit around those stoves 24/7 and don’t seem to notice it. I teach them 2 mornings a week and I get bronchitis.

The doctor Willie of the day, a doctor from Zimbabwe, sent me home with tons of medication and told me to stay in bed for a couple of days. After a few days of getting steadily more miserable, I decided also to try out the healthcare in Ladybrand. The doctor in Ladybrand thought that I had been given excellent medication but needed a bit more, and told me to stay in bed for another couple of days. With the conference starting this Sunday, you will understand that this is excellent timing.

I cannot in all honesty say that it was with bleeding heart that I had to pull out of last week’s principals’ meetings. Those meetings are enough to force up a saint’s blood pressure to over the 300. But when Sam called me last Tuesday that he really needed me to attend the meeting of that day, I got myself out of bed, if only because I was rather curious to see if they had got themselves more organised. And an interesting experience it was.

Progress up to three weeks ago:
o Keynote speakers withdrew at the last minute without telling anybody. We only found out when we kept chasing them for their profiles for the program.
o Committee members charged with the responsibility to find replacements disappeared for weeks on end, and on their return, nothing proved to have happened.
o Letters for VIPs were delivered to the wrong addresses or not at all. When they finally arrived on the right desk, the secretary responsible managed to lose the letters.
o A group of principals who would organise a workshop about turning failing schools into success stories, but wanted some personal coaching from me, never showed up for their appointment, from which I (correctly) drew the conclusion that they too had pulled out. I found Gerard Mathot, the man of the self-learning centre, willing to fill their slot. Sam and Colin were delighted. Was the committee too ?

Sunday night I had to get out of bed to mail the program to someone who Sam thought would replace a keynote speaker. On Monday morning I learnt that we had been talking to the wrong person. Case of mistaken identity. Nobody but Mr Khampane knows who the program should be sent to but Mr Khampane was in Zwasiland and out of reach.

State of affairs on Tuesday, less than a week before the conference.
o Gerard is to be told that he is ‘plan B’, as the committee has every faith in the principals delivering after all. Fortunately, Gerard has a sense of humor, and thinks being used as the wild card will make a good story for his own blog.
o Official opening by Minister of Education: not confirmed.
o Entertainment during the social events: not confirmed.
o Excursions on the Wednesday: not confirmed.
o Transportation from the hotels to the conference: not confirmed.

Does this overly bother the meeting? Not really. What does get them going? One of our clever committee members does some moonlighting in dress shirts but isn’t very successful. He has a consignment that he can’t get shifted, and now he has the brilliant idea that we could use these shirts as uniforms for the committee AND as presents for the speakers.

Not everybody is thrilled with the idea, especially the more traditionally-built among us are rather worried that those shirts will not bring out their bosoms favourably. When the altruistic supplier launches into a long speech about the importance of this conference being a success for Lesotho in general and the principals especially, and how uniforms are an essential part of this success, Sam abruptly gets up and tell the meeting that he has to take me home. So now I still don’t know what I am going to wear at that conference.

The committee expected until 3 weeks ago about 800 participants. The count on Tuesday was still below 300. So the committee has finally agreed to take the conference to the Maseru Sun. We have actually taken a decision! However, “this is Africa”, as people never tire to explain to me, “and ‘don’t be surprised if on Monday 600 extra people do show up unannounced, all clamouring for hotel rooms!” This conference may become interesting after all.

What I did mind was that my health interfered with our playing tourists. We were getting so good at it. I had at long last succeeded in making sense of the local public transport system. A myriad of companies provides transport to almost anywhere with taxis, shared taxis, minibuses and coaches and at regular intervals. The competition is murderous. Everything comes apart at the seams as it should in any 3rd-world country. And it is by far the best we have seen in Africa. Getting on the minibuses to Morija and Roma is child’s play. Anybody can do that. We were to sample the long-distance stuff.

We started our sightseeing by taking the bus to Mohale’s Hoek and Quteng in the southern mountains. The bus was rather full and uncomfortable, but ahhh the couleur locale offset by that!
Traders in anything under the sun force themselves in and out of the bus at every stop, and during the ride people get up to talk about their pyramid scam, their own particular brand of church, the insurance they sell, drugs for all the ailments mentioned above.

At Mohale’s Hoek we were thrown out of the bus. We were the only passengers going all the way to Quteng and it is not good business sense for a bus driver to go all the way for 2 passengers! To be fair, he did give us the money for the local minibus that would take us the last stretch into Quteng.

Every car and motor park has a toilet block of sorts. Some are so filthy that you will only go there in extreme desperation with your nose and eyes firmly closed, but there is somewhere to go. “Not in Mohale’s Hoek”, the bus driver was sure of his case. “But all the people working here have to go sometimes too, don’t they?” This was an emergency, and since we had been thrown off the bus anyway, I really, really wanted a clean tree or any acceptable alternative.

It always helps when you speak a bit of the local lingo. People become a lot more helpful if you can do at least part of the greetings. So, on my best “lumella” lots of people were prepared to help me find the loos. Fingers pointed every which way, but eventually I was taken on a 5-minute walk to the nearest toilet block. This doesn’t seem long, but I can assure you that it is a long way, especially when it takes you round several corners and you are not sure if you will ever find your own way back.

The ladies’ proved surprisingly clean, but for some reason had only half doors, and there was a group of men at work in it, who were not prepared to leave for my sake. But these were dire times and I had a bus to catch. Fortunately, the gentlemen could take a hint and disappeared with some haste when I demonstratively began to settle myself down in their presence.

Back in the car park, where Mel had seen a number of minibuses for Quteng come and go, increasingly worried that I would never come back again; the struggle for life went on as usual. Fruit sellers on the spot had positioned themselves so that it would be totally impossible to worm yourself into a front seat without overthrowing their wares. While I bent over to pick up the bananas that I had swept off trying to slip in the front seat, a student tried to worm his way to the seat next to the driver. I have dealt with such affront before. I stuck out my butt and raised my voice and the chick backed off.

The ride to Quteng was breathtaking in more than one sense and started with the driver putting the sound equipment at full blast. That’s another reason why I like sitting in the front. As soon as the driver’s attention is on the road, I turn down the sound down. Then a silent struggle ensues that can take from a couple of minutes to the entire road. So far I have always won. Nobody has told me yet to keep my filthy paws of their tuners. This is survival! It doesn’t happen that often that drivers actually play something we like to listen to, let alone that we want to be deafened by it!

By the time we reached Quteng it was dark, but we found the hotel easily enough by the noises of a party going on. The party was organised to drive away evil spirits in the house of the hotel owner across from the hotel. We were expected the receptionist assured us. We did eventually look in and drank several glasses of home brew. But when the braai that was being prepared never materialized, we went back to eat at the hotel and watch the football on a big screen.

The Basotho I was watching the football with were all in favour of Germany, until they realized I wasn’t German. Then they switched allegiance to Spain. And that is the ONLY reason Germany lost.

Do we have to mention Netherlands-Spain at this stage? I am sure you all watched it yourselves. Of course everybody in Lancers Inn supported the Dutch, so Lancers was in deep mourning after the match. And days later I was still getting condolences from total strangers. Even the surgeon, whom we saw on 14 July started off by telling me how deeply sorry he was. Enough about football!

The next morning Quteng proved a friendly mountain town. Nothing special. The journey was obviously more important than the arrival. In the bus park we found a 12-seater that went straight to Maseru and filled up completely in minutes. The relaxed driver played some very nice African jazz at an acceptable noise level, and we didn’t even stop at Mohale’s Hoek. We were back in 2 hours totally motivated to do all our sightseeing by public transport.

Since we had to go to Bloemfontein anyway, and couldn’t make it there and back in a single day, thanks to the problems at the border, we decided to turn that visit into a mid-week outing. Halfway between Ladybrand and Bloemfontein lies one of the smaller wild parks: Maria Moroko. Since there are no predators, visitors are allowed to walk around freely, as long as they watch out for rhinoceroses and wildebeest. We were the only visitors and the procedure was simple. The ranger opened the gate for us and left the padlock open. Could we lock the gate behind us when we left?

There is a dam in the river right inside the park and from the dam you can walk along the river. There wasn’t a rhino in sight of course. And the wildebeest had gone to greener pastures too. But it was really beautiful, and the silence was impressive. Not even birds. I went on to climb the mountain, (which I had to come down again too rather less easily), to spot game on the greener side, while Mel found a grassy spot for a nap.

The lodge is in the middle of the park with a terrific view of the river, which in the summer is teeming with rhinos of course. I am sure it is even more beautiful then. And it is such an easy ride from Maseru. I guess we will be back again.

We still had to see that waterfall in Semonkong, so that was the next project. The bus ride there was another story altogether. The 8 o’clock bus, suitable for 58 passengers, eventually left at half past 10 with about a 100 people crammed into it. Until it finally left an endless stream of traders had forced itself in and out with a wide assortment of wares. The human body is more flexible than we had thought. The ally was just wide enough for one person to stand among the benches. All the same, sometimes 3 people, of more than twice my size managed to manoeuvre themselves past each other, threatening the lives of the seated passengers with their bags and cases as they went along.

The pace was steady and vast. Standing passengers, who supported themselves by leaning their full weight on the sitting ones, prevented us from being thrown off the benches whenever the bus careered round a bend. The windows misted over continually, so Mel still didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy the view. Walking to the lodge 4 hours later, he wasn’t sure which had been worse: the bus or the Toyota.

The manager was full of sympathy again, and offered us a cup of coffee to settle down, but she was adamant about the return trip: not a chance we would be able to hitch a ride, we had come by bus and that was how we were going to leave again.

This time we had plenty of time to admire the waterfall. And impressive it was. The whole area is impressive. In the dining room we met an Australian couple, Helle and Mark, who had come by bus too. Together with them we caught the bus back. But since we were the first passengers, this time we had the front seats. And that made all the difference. This time we did have the stunning view, and although the bus filled up completely again, mostly with people who had made the same ride the day before, we were far less bothered by it in the front. Just imagine having to make that ride twice every weekend with your bags and cases and your babies on your backs!

Halfway down the mountain we heard an ominous bang and then the bus seemed out of control a bit. “We have a flat”, knew Mark. The tyre turned out to be completely torn. And there we were, in the middle of nowhere in the biting pole wind.

The changing of the wheel proved a study in African improvisation. Judging from the state of the other tyres, you would have expected the bus crew to have ample experience with a job like that. But nobody knew how to operate the jack. Mark did, but in the first instance that wasn’t much help as the jack was dry and there was only half a tin of oil in the bus, besides, his help wasn’t appreciated. The ticket collector/bus mechanic had crawled under the bus and that is where he stayed during the entire procedure, even when the bus was moved, as if he had no greater joy in life than to be crushed by a bus with a 100 passengers in it. And since the engine was never switched off, he must have had a dose of diesel fumes to last him a life time.

Some passengers went in search of big stones to put beside the wheels, and then the driver tried unsuccessfully to manoeuvre the bus on to them. That went on for about 30 minutes when a bakkie, that is Afrikaans for a pickup truck, came down the road. It was stopped by a few passengers who didn’t believe that we would ever be saved and preferred to freeze to dead in the open back to waiting any longer.

That incident proved the breakthrough. The people working on the jack and the wheel made a vague gesture of making space, enough for Mark to bend over as in passing to point to a screw that should be turned to give the jack more lift, and then walk on as if nothing had happened. In this way nobody lost face. After that the job was done in no time. Within 15 minutes we were back on the road. The bakkie was overtaken with loud cheering and blasts of the horn.

For this past weekend we had planned a tour of the Golden gate park, but it wasn’t to be as I spent most of it in bed. Another project that needs to be postponed until the summer. Since we are now both part of the organising committee, we have announced that we want to come along on the tour to Katse Dam, one of the more complicated excursions that has not been confirmed yet, so it remains to be seen if we ever get to go there.

This morning, while typing away at the blog, I listened to This American Life, a podcast we subscribe to. The subject this morning was sex addiction. Doctor Adam, see above, might have known a solution to the dilemma of the patients: their group therapy wasn’t working very well. Patients would regularly sneak off for a little sex orgy in the toilets “as you can’t leave your penis in the car when so desired!”

Your own problems seem so futile in the context of the sufferings of the world!