The Pioneer of Paray High School

(Ralph)

The road from Maseru to Thaba Tseka is the stuff of legend  - all who know Jim have heard tales of harrowing trips in Land Rovers from Thaba Tseka, the settlement in the mountains where Jim and Sile worked as teachers in the early 70’s, to the capital Maseru (one famous tale features running out of gas in the middle of the night in a driving rainstorm…).  I was of course eager to experience The Road.

We set out from Maseru on a beautiful fall day on what everyone told us was a vastly improved highway.  (One thing not improved was traffic in Maseru, which apparently did not exist 35 years ago, but certainly does now.  )  And the turn that had once marked the beginning of  90 miles of gravel road led us onto smooth asphalt, much to Jim’s delight.  The scenery was lovely, and the driving effortless.    (Note to Dave:  we came across a group of cyclists on this road climbing two of the longest, steepest mountain passes I have ever seen, at an altitude of 8000 ft. – when we stopped to talk to them we learned their ride would total 160 miles!)

But of course tarred roads, like all good things, must come to an end.  After about 60 miles the asphalt petered out and we started bumping along the old road.  There was construction going on as they worked to widen this part of the road, but clearly there had been little attention paid to improving what existed since it would be paved over soon anyway.  Rough would be an understatement.  Jim was quite cavalier (faking it totally, in my opinion), but it certainly pushed the comfort of what I wanted to tackle in a two-wheel-drive “saloon” car, as they refer to them here. 

We had our own little adventure when we pulled over  to the verge (which was even rockier than the road) to allow a truck to pass and a small rock got lodged into the left front wheel.  This produced the most god-awful screeching noise which we both imagined signaled the impending destruction of our brakes. 

We unloaded all the luggage from the trunk and set it by the side of the road so we could get at the tire changing gear, and removed the tire so we could search for the source of our problem.  (Passing vehicles – well, two passing vehicles - stopped to ascertain if we were OK, and then chuckled at our rather large pile of stuff out there in the middle of nowhere.)After a few rather nervous minutes, I finally spotted the culprit, wedged very firmly between the brake disc and housing. 

 

This left us with the problem of how to get the rock out.  As it turns out,  the 69 cents I spent on my comb in the pharmacy in Franschhoek counts as the best money spent on this trip thus far.

As we continued bumping along, Jim mentioned that at some point soon, in his recollection, the road got really bad – steep and rocky – and was hoping that they had improved that section.  (This, of course, did wonders for my peace of mind).  As it turns out, this last rough section had actually been paved recently (funded by Saudi Arabia, apparently),  and after a few minor hazards, such as the road full of sheep, we made it to Thaba Tseka.

Of everywhere we have been, I have felt by far the most out of my element here.  There are no other tourists at all, and as tourists, we are sufficiently unusual to elicit stares as we walk around.  (We found out today that someone had been asking the priest just who we were – there are a few other Western types in town, including several Peace Corps volunteers, but they are well known, and these two old white guys wandering around taking photographs apparently got tongues wagging.)    Thaba Tseka has changed immensely in the years since Jim lived here – there is electricity, for one thing, and cell phone service.  There are houses, buildings, and one paved street.   And though these things connect the town to the outside world in a way that was unimaginable 40 years ago, it still feels very, very far from the world I know.

The reason we came here, indeed the reason we’ve come to Africa, is for Jim to return to a place that has meant so much to him.  (For those of you who don’t know, Jim taught junior high school math here from 1969 until 1972; it’s also where he met Sile, his wife for 10 years, who was teaching English at the same school).  In Jim’s typical fashion, there was very little planning or prearrangement that went into this return after a 37 year absence.  Nonetheless we had a series of remarkable encounters with the residents of Thaba Tseka.

We took a brief foray around town the Sunday afternoon of our arrival, wandering up to the school (wandering is very literally what we did here – there are no streets and very little definition of property – paths go this way and that, people’s houses have  yards, but it’s all very open).   The school is a boarding school, so there were students around – all the boys were at a big soccer match happening in town, but we talked at length to a number of the girls.

I ended up taking pictures of each of the dozen or so girls, who were as thrilled to see themselves as any teenage girl anywhere.  We told the girls that we’d mail them pictures when we returned home.  Antonea, in the very center of this photo, promptly whipped pen and paper out of her backpack to record each student’s name so we could properly address our mail.  Jim rather distractedly took the list from her when she had finished and she admonished him, “Be careful with that!  It’s very important!”

The school, unfortunately, was not looking good.  This is one of the classrooms where Jim taught – he says it doesn’t look like much has been done to maintain it since he was last there.  We later heard from one of the teachers that Paray School had a great reputation during the 1980’s, but has slipped a lot since then.  It’s not clear why.

This morning we returned to the school and Jim met with the assistant principal, Ntate Phuti (Ntate is the Sesotho “Mr.”).  N. Phuti took Jim to the office and introduced him to the rest of the staff:   “Ntate Jim was a teacher at this school in 1970.  He is a pioneer of Paray School!”  Jim had brought photographs of the school from his day (two buildings in the midst of fields, as opposed to the dozens of buildings now), which created whoops of delight as they were passed around the office.

These two women have worked as cooks at he school since 1970, and one of them did indeed remember Jim!  She called him Nganesu Jim – Jim later told me that it had been a very long time since anyone had referred to him as “Little Brother”!

We visited the Mission (where Jim lived for his first year in Thaba Tseka) and met the new priest there, Father Emanuel. A delightful man, we learned a great deal from him about the state of things in Thaba Tseka.  Education in Lesotho used to be the province of the church; the government has since taken it over and is providing (ostensibly) free primary education for all children, but still expects the Church to fund the upkeep of all the buildings, obviously a sore point with Father. 

Walking back to our hotel (extremely basic, but a hotel nonetheless), we crossed the school’s soccer pitch and a man called us over to ask where we were from.  This guy, Robert Rompolo, was a student of Jim’s in 1971!  He is now himself a teacher at Paray High School, teaching agricultural science (the girls are some of his students).

 

Of the four students whose names Jim remembers from those he taught, he found out that three of them have become teachers (Robert being one of those), and one is in the Lesotho military.  As you can imagine, it meant a great deal to Jim, after 37 years, to hear of this success.

In the afternoon we walked over to the hospital, the only other institution  in Thaba Tseka in 1970.  Sister Anunciata was the head nurse at the hospital then and treated Jim and the other volunteers for all their African maladies.  Sister stayed at that hospital, running the operation for many years, before leaving to start a nursing school behind the hospital.

Sister gave us a tour of her school.  There are currently 52 students, all housed at the school.  She teaches classes, and handles all the administration with the help of a small office staff.  Every student graduates and is immediately at work – there is a desperate shortage of nurses in Lesotho.  She’s beginning a new program in the fall to add new students for a different degree.  There are no more dorm rooms or classrooms, so she’s ordered bunk beds to double the bedroom capacity!  All this in a tiny town, hours from the capitol and any sort of supplies, in one of the poorest countries in Africa.   What an absolutely remarkable human being.  I was both moved and inspired to see how much good one person can accomplish, with determination and endless hard work, and I feel blessed to have met her.

Finally, we went back by the school, and knocked on the door of one of the small houses where Jim and Sile had lived.  Ntate Sam is the Peace Corps volunteer living there now. Sam is from Minnesota, and has been living and teaching in Thaba Tseka for about a year and a half.   The torch is passed.