Is Lesotho in the Goldilocks Zone?

We all know how important water is. Hamma, the original blood bender from the Southern Water Tribe in the Avatar Universe, once said, “Where there is life, there is water.”

Physicists understand the importance of water in what is known as the Goldilocks zone when looking for hospitable planets. If the Exoplanet is too far from or too close to the parent star, liquid water won't exist. At the moment, liquid water is something that does not exist in my village, and many places in Lesotho. 

In this post, I will compare how we use water in Lesotho and the US. There are 4 categories that will be discussed: Showers, Dishes, Clothes, and Toilets.

Showers:

How long is your average shower?

I know mine was about 40 minutes. I wouldn’t even use soap. I would just stand there, thinking about how I would get to space, why I don’t have super powers, or even where I should eat. That was about 88 gallons per shower. I know...I was wasteful, and not even that clean, but lets look beyond that. Side note...I drove a prius. Continuing....

In the United States, showerheads are limited to 2.2 Gallons per minute. The average shower time in the states is 10 minutes for a male, and 18 minutes for a female. Therefore the average person uses 31 Gallons of water per shower.

To get ready in Lesotho, we bucket bathe. I heat up 1 scoop of water and mix it with 2 scoops of cold water to get that perfect temperature. The scoop that most Basotho and I use is 1.5L. Therefore my bucket baths amount to 4.5L or 1.2 Gallons.

To summarize, a typical American will get ready with 31 Gallons of water, and a typical Mosotho will get ready with 1.2 Gallons.

Basotho use 96.1% less water to bathe than Americans.

Dishes:

The average dishwasher in The States uses 45 gallons per load.

To wash the same amount of dishes, I use 4 scoops of water, which is 6L or 1.55 Gallons.

Basotho use 96.6% less water to wash the same amount of dishes as Americans.

Clothes:

A typical top-loading dishwasher uses about 40 gallons per load.

For the same amount of laundry, My ‘M’eighbor (She is my ‘M’e and my neighbor) uses about 40L or 10.3 Gallons.

Basotho use 74.3% less water to wash the same amount of clothes as Americans. 

Toilets:

The average American flush of the glorious porcelain throne is about 1.6 Gallons per flush. The average person visits the toilet about 7 times a day for his or her diverse excretory needs. That’s a total of 11.2 gallons in a day.

In the remote villages of Lesotho, we do not use water for our business. Instead we have outdoor pit latrines. For those 7 times the average Basotho and I use the latrine, we use zero water. We also have convenient indoor “pee” buckets designed for that nighttime urgent awakening.

Basotho use 100% less water than Americans to relieve themselves.

Lets calculate:

Here is a math problem.

If Joe Americano and Abuti Tebatso (my Sesotho name) have a typical day, as in they use the bathroom 7 times in the day, they each wash one load of laundry, they each wash the same amount of dishes, and they each get ready in the morning by either showering or bucket bathing, how much less water does Abuti Tebatso use?

Joe Americano will use 127.2 Gallons. (Average American) 

Abuti Tebatso will use 13.1 Gallons. (Average Mosotho)

Basotho use 89.7% less water than Americans.

Take Away

Right now in Fobane, and many places in Lesotho there is a water shortage. The country has been rampaged by a drought for many years now, and it has had its toll. Crops are not as bountiful, rivers are drying out, and dust storms are becoming the norm. I use less than one bucket a week, which is 20L. And that is without trying to conserve. I feel like a water bender in the middle of the desert. Without water, I am wary to bathe. I am wary of cooking pasta or accumulating dishes. I am wary to wear fresh clothes because that means I need to wash more. There is a lot more to worry about than whether the new Hunger Games Movie will be sold out. Therefore if you are reading this, I urge you to try your best to be less wasteful with the most precious of resources in life. 

I am very fortunate to be living in Fobane though. My fellow neighbors, teachers, and principal ask me how I am, and are also concerned if I have enough water. Even students offer to fetch water for me from far away sources. 

Pula, Pula, ska tsamaea. 

Rain, rain, don't go away. 

School School School

Although I have not posted in awhile, I plan on catching up very quickly. School started January 28th, and it has been a nonstop ride. Although this may come off chauvinistic and conceited, I would say my science and math skills are sufficiently adept, and I rarely have to look at a book to know I am on the right track while teaching. But teaching, especially to students where English is a second language, is extraordinarily difficult and frustrating.
The culture here is much more relaxed, where deadlines for homework can be flexible, students who are late to school, still leisure their way over. For the first three months of teaching, I always compared my high school time to the Basotho version of High School. I questioned why students don’t care about coming late, or why they don’t care about studying or turning in homework, and even why come to class if they aren’t going to take notes or pay attention. My philosophy is that if you don’t take notes, or don’t pay attention, than you probably already are starting at an A in my class. But the students don’t strive for American A’s; they strive for passing, which is a dismal 50. And if they don’t pass, they laugh it off as if nothing is really the matter.
But then I took a step back, and tried to come up with reasons why they don’t consider school as important as I did growing up. Many of these students are single and double orphans, meaning that they have no parental figure guiding them, or explaining them why education is important. Even so, it is easier here for men, and even women, to get a job in the mines without a formal education, and still make a lot of money. At Fobane, we see a lot of villagers returning at the month’s end, and they are doing just fine economically. Basotho here generally don’t buy much, and the food they grow is enough for them to survive and eat fine. Many students also have not ventured out of the village often, or have only seen the local close by camp towns such as Maputsoe or Teyateyaneng. Therefore, there is no real motivation for them to see that education can really help them. Why change something that you are already content with? And its true, Basotho all over the village are extremely happy, kind, and generous people.
My primary job here is to educate the high school students in math and science, and also to motivate them to understand how proper education can open up their world. I started a few things in my school, one being a prefect system, based on Harry Potter, which creates an environment for students to speak English more often. There are two students in each class, boy and girl, who teachers have chosen as the prefects and their job is to write down the names of students who speak Sesotho. In theory, this will prepare students for their final COSC exam in their Form E (Kind of like the SAT), which is entirely in English. This idea has definitely gotten more people to speak English, but has also created a lot of work for the English Teachers and myself. When a student gets caught speaking Sesotho, their punishment is to write an Essay in English on one of the fun topics we came up with. It is still a work in progress idea, but I hope that diligence will eventually make a permanent English-speaking environment at School.
The other big thing I started here was a general peer-tutoring club, where I bring Form B students (9th grade) to the primary school to teach Standard 7 students (7th grade) math. This was a great endeavor, and students really enjoyed it. Although I am unsure of the impact, it definitely exposes my Form B students to older material that they both forgot, and need for the future. This tutoring then spread between classes in my high school, so students in Form C tutor Form A students, and Form D students tutor form B students. Unfortunately this past month after my vacation to Port Elizabeth (next blog post), this club died down because every day after school the time I had for tutoring was used for practicing cultural dances for Cultural day (also next blog post).
I also joined the Teacher's soccer team, and I'm surprisingly not as bad as I expected. But these teachers, even the large round ones, can run and play soccer a lot longer than I can!
I hope this was an easy to follow post, updating you on my main job in school!