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 as the villageâ€™s first foreign resident since 1966. In that year, 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? For how long can dinners of cornmeal and leaves sustain you? TÅ¡oeneng is a world apart from his home in America. But he persists in becoming familiar with the new lifestyle; he learns to speak the strange local tongue and 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, candid, at times adaptive and at times rebellious. It is the ultimate tale of the transplant.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-01-14
Format Kindle eBook

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