Sylvia's Journal

I am back in Pretoria, a touchdown that is supposed to be a bit longer than the previous touchdowns. My return trip to the US has been rescheduled for March 26. I will have managed to have spent most of the two worst winter months in the southern hemisphere. It is worth living in hotels for 6 weeks.

I left Maseru under heavy clouds and thunderstorms and arrived in Jo’burg a little ahead of these same (?) clouds and thunderstorms. I still react poorly to the loud thunderclaps, looking quickly around me to see whether anyone is alarmed. No one is; in fact people here love what I would call bad weather here as it cleans the air and lowers the temperature.

I left Lesotho on Moshoeshoe Day – it was not clear whether it was his birthday (would anyone know?) or the day of his death (surely recorded by the missionaries as it was the day before his christening). At the hotel all the staff was dressed in traditional costumes and the ladies behind the reception counter couldn’t help wiggle their impressive behinds on the beat of the local band that played in the bar area.

Across town and across the nation there were lots of sport games; we had seen busses stuffed with uniformed school children amassing in various towns on our way back from Butha Buthe. But it was not a day off for the immigration officer at the airport who told me, with a sad face, that she didn’t get to celebrate the nation’s founder’s death day. For her it was about death, not birth. Maybe that’s why she didn’t get the day off.

I am back in the lovely guesthouse on the outskirts of Pretoria. It has as its byline ‘the discerning businessman’s choice.’ This is odd because I have so far only seen one business man here (from Texas) and the rest were all women. The rooms are decorated with a woman’s touch for a woman’s taste.

Everything is greasy, my smartphone, my computer keyboard, my glasses. I emerged from my weekly massage with a thick coat of oil. It was Patience once again who covered me with oil and started to knead my sore and unused muscles in a way that made me flinch. This time I asked her to be a bit gentler, so I could enjoy the massage even more. She didn’t use the smooth and slippery stones this time, burning hot in a nice way; I guess I forgot to specify this detail.

The rest of the day was about completion – completing multiple reports – and closure of a magnificent two weeks in Lesotho. I didn’t mind the work, after all, what else is there to do when you are in a hotel on the top of a hill? In the morning my colleagues joined me on their day off – consultants are a lot of extra work. We sat on the terrace looking out over the vast plains around Maseru under a blue sky with a nice cool breeze and discussed work, language, congruence and philosopy.

We sent our youngest colleague home after an hour, knowing that his young wife, 9 months pregnant, was waiting for him in the car outside. We couldn’t get her to come in and sit with us – a clear demarcation between work life and personal life that I didn’t want to impose any longer than needed. We reviewed some critical documents that serve as a basis for all the work planned for the future, including the phasing out of our presence and resources. Rarely do projects have exit strategies but this one is trying to get it on paper – not an easy task.

The team leader joined me for dinner in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and we talked for hours – he likes talking and I like listening, making us a well-balanced pair. I continue to learn more about the dynamics of the project through these conversations and hope that I can bend some of them around into more productive avenues in the next few weeks. I am not quite sure how but, as a good Quaker, I know ‘way will open.’