Lesotho

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Review of Greg Alder’s (Lesotho 2003-06) THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL
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Mary Jane Manning (Lesotho 1976–78)

Review of Greg Alder’s (Lesotho 2003-06) THE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL

The Mountain School by Greg Alder (Lesotho 2003-06) CreateSpace, $13.00 250 pages 2013 $13.00 (paperback), $5.00 (Kindle) Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996-98) • If you’ve been to Peace Corps, especially if you have been to Peace Corps in Africa, you know the feeling – the feeling of being dropped off at your site by a white Peace Corps truck.  Peace Corps drops you off with your stuff and they drive away.  And there you are.  Alone. And even if you weren’t in Africa, you will have that feeling at some point on your first day at your new site.  Even if you are surrounded by people almost all the time – like I was for most of my service in Mali – you can’t avoid those moments of feeling totally apart.  It’s a universal feeling. Greg Alder has mastered portraying those (what I believe to be) universals of the . . .

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Mary Jane Manning (Lesotho 1976–78)

Monday, November 21 4:48 pm LESOTHO HIGH SCHOOL SEEMED to be a closely-knit community from 1976-1978. Girls with girls. Boys with boys. Clustered together in groups. They were happy and smiling mainly because they had each other’s support and friendship. For me they were a unique model of poverty of spirit . . . A distinguished feature of character well removed from the Greedy side of U.S. materialism and a learning experience I returned home with. A great many students, out of the two hundred and thirty assigned to my art classes, were capable & talented. It was exciting to work with them because their progress was remarkable. Toward the end of my two years teaching stay I could discern that some students began to realize their own potential for creating and discovering beauty. They were suddenly liberated from a suppressed feeling of being worthless. Some began to recognize proportion . . .

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