The Mountain School: Three Years Learning as a Peace Corps

The Mountain School: Three Years Learning as a Peace Corps Teacher in Lesotho, Africa

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a mountainous enclave in southern Africa, and like mountain zones throughout the world it is isolated, steeped in tradition, and home to few outsiders. The people, known as Basotho, are respected in the area as the only tribe never to be defeated by European colonizers. Greg Alder arrives in TÅ¡oeneng in 2003 as the villageâ€™s first foreign resident since 1966. Back then, the Canadian priest who had been living there was robbed and murdered in his quarters. Set up as a Peace Corps teacher at the villageâ€™s secondary school, Alder finds himself incompetent in so many unexpected ways. How do you keep warm in this place where it snows but there is no electricity? How do you feed yourself where there are no grocery stores let alone restaurants? TÅ¡oeneng is a world apart from his home in America, but Alder persists in adapting. He learns to grow food, he learns to speak the strange local language, and he makes enough friends such that he is eventually invited to participate in initiation rites. Yet even as he seems accepted into the TÅ¡oeneng fold, he sees how much of an outsider he will always remainâ€”and perhaps want to remain. The Mountain School is insightful and candid, at times accepting and at times rebellious. It is the ultimate tale of the transplant.

The Mountain School: Three Years Learning as a Peace Corps Teacher in Lesotho, Africa