In a sea of mountains
Trip Start
Nov 30, 2009
1
38
40
Trip End
Sep 06, 2010
Lesotho, Lesotho
Monday, July 26, 2010
So I was sat outside the backpackers at 9.30am on the road that led to the Sani Pass, nibbling on some bread, since I find it impossible to sit at the roadside with bread in my bag and to not eat it!
Was trying to hitch a lift this time because the backpackers said it was safe into Lesotho and the minibuses just ran in the afternoon. However, the first thing to stop was a minibus and so I hopped on with my bags. About ten minutes later, we stopped at a kind of lay-by onthe road and joined a queu outside this little tin shack thing,which I at first thought was a ridiculously run-down border control. It turned out to be the minibus ticket office though (or money-taker, since no tickets are actually given).
One minibus full of people that'd been there when we arrived left straight away, but there were only a few of us in our minibus so we waited for more people to come to fill it up. And waited... and waited... for three whole bloody hours! But it was a very beautiful place to wait for that long, and waiting, I have learnt, is part of a true African adventure.
So anyway, finally another minibus turns up with enough people to fill our minibus and so we finally set off to Lesotho. Well,just when I thought I'd seen it all, a road comes along to top all roads.
After climbing for a while,we drove parallel to a huge valley of bouncy castles and slides, which was then made to look tiny as the road kamikazed its way up another mountain, eventually reaching border control at a height of about 2900m.
My fellow bus passengers were also very memorable. Mainly women (unusually), only a couple spoke English but they would often look at me and speak to each other in Sesotho. In England, this type of behaviour would make me highly paranoid, but they all wore such warm expressions that I was confident I wasn't the butt of any joke. One of the woman kept talking to me in Sesotho as well, even though I kept saying that I couldn't speak it, but in the end I just smiled back and nodded.
By the time we were getting close to Mokhotlong, the closest town to the Sani Pass border and where the bus terminated, it was getting dark. I'd been planning to get further transport to a village outside town because I knew of a cheaper place to stay there, but one woman said it was now too late and told me of a cheaper place to stay there but one woman said it was now too late and told me of a cheap place in town where she was staying. So, after being taught Sesotho greetings, and even singing a little and head banging along to the traditional song blasting through the minibus with the women who kept trying to speak to me in Ssotho, the minibus dropped me and this woman right at the end of town at a guesthouse type place that you definitely needed insider information to reach, since the only indicator that this was a guesthouse was a little old sign on a gate with three letters on.
It was too late now to go into town and eat but I had some bread and tomato paste with me, so made - yes, you guessed it - tomato paste sandwiches! But I felt strangely lonely, sat in the cold room on my own, when I'd got used to nice backpackers with cooking facilities, until I thought back to all the rooms throughout Africa that I've sat in on my own in the evening and was suddenly glad to be back on the rad, all on my own.
I spent a day in Mokhotlong, basically going on a very long walk. I just followed the main road out of town for a few hours but even just doing this led me through jaw-dropping scenery and by traditional Besotho huts and horsemen. There was also usually a track by the road that would be used by horses, though the road was frequented by little traffic anyway.
I stopped to eat my picnic lunch, overlooking a little mountain island and farmers ploughing the land. Found it crazy that I could be in such a remote and mountainous place and still be drinking fanta.
I knew I was in a much less visited area by the fact that people stared more, and kids asked for money. People also kept asking me where I was going, which was pretty irritating since I didn't really know the answer, and they'd often say 'How are you going?', and not seem to accept 'Fine, thanks' or pointing up the road as a valid response.
I'd decided to go back to where I was staying before getting something to eat in town but by the time I walked back into town, even though only 6pm, it was dark and so everything was shut and the place practically deserted. Cue another night of tomato paste butties.
I'd decided to got to a town called Hlotse next because it seemed that in Lesotho you could find cheaper local places to stay without having to rely on backpackers, and Hlotse was one of the places where you could see dinosaur footprints!
The minibus ride there took us over the 'Roof of Africa' - Lesotho's highest, most mointainous area, which means extremely high and extremely mountainous, seeing as though Lesotho's lowest point is above 1000m (the highest low point of any country in the world!), and is jam-packed with mountains. The highest point we reached was around 3500m and on the side of one mountain was a semi-artificial little ski slope. It did look very bizarre - a load of cars, and people criss-crossing down a little patch in the middle of mountainous nowhere, and we all stared at it incredulously until it disappeared out of sight.
Finding a place to stay in Hlotse turned out to be not as easy as I'd joped. There was just one hotel and one guesthouse - both of which charged at least a third of any weekly budget and so I got another minibus for ten minutes back up the road to a place that looked like it could be a place to stay. If not, I figured I'd just ask if they knew about anywhere I could stay/hope someone took pity on me and gave me a bed for the night.
Well, it turned out to be rooms to rent for a month but the girl whose dad owned it said there was a room I could have for the night but it didn't have a bed (or manger, come to that). Was just relieved to have somewhere secure to spend the night, and had my sleeping bag, but she wasn't so sure and, after talking to her sister-in-law, said I could stay in their house because they had a spare room. I offered to pay and she wouldn't let me but sat me down and made me tea.
Then, that night, when we were getting parafin (which she wouldn't let me pay for) she said that there was no need for me to leave the next day and I could stay another day to rest (maybe having backpacked for two months was starting to take a visible toll on me?). Realised the next day was Sunday as well asnd so asked if they were going to church and discovered that her dad was a pastor. Going to church may not be fun in England but going to singing, dancing church in Africa certainly is!
I felt a bit awkward when her dad and brother arrived home but they were extremely welcoming and taht night, when we were huddled round the little stove thing to keep warm, Malekgala told me that they were all smiling because they were happy to have me here, which certainly stopped me feeling bad!
The church was called the Zion Christian Church and the best way to describe it is as God's singing and dancing army. Everyone stands in a circle and one person takes the singing lead while the rest follow. Women tend to clap and sway, while men stamp their feet and, when the will takes them, step into the middle, stamping their feet even harder and sometimes break dancing. There's even a khki-coloured uniform that members can wear, and so when I first saw her dad, I asked if he was a soldier!
Their church was a small building filled with benches, perched on the edge of a mountain. On arriving, we were flicked all over with water, including the soles of our shoes. We at first sung and danced outside while people arrived, in separate male and female groups to start with, before all joining together. In one corner, a big pot of water was being boiled and I at first thought we were going to get tea but then warm cups of water were gradually given to everyone. When the women were given it, they knelt down to drink an so, though not thirsty, I just did what they did. We then went into the church where there was more singing and clapping, and her dad and another pastor occasionally spoke. Was back to the guessing game again of when to close eyes and say 'amen'. This time though, people would be taken outside the church two at a time, while the service continued, and I kept wondering when it would be my turn and what the hell happened to people out there - though at least I could see that they were returning intact! One woman in front of me also kept randomly shouting out in some kind of agreement and kind of barking while making a strange jerky movement. I at first decided she was just crazy, since no-one paid any attention to this strange behaviour, but she was behaving perfectly normally once the service had ended so think it was all part of feeling close to God. Everyone then got up to be touched on the head, shoulders and stomach by the pastor. Some people also got up to have a piece of burning paper waved around their head, held in front of their nose and then placed in their hand, and some to be prodded with a small rounded wooden stick.
When we got in the car to go back home, I asked her what it had all been about and she said that the water and paper and everything had all been blessed, and the people who chose to be prodded with the stick had aches and pains that the stick was supposed to stop, though she added that whether it worked or not depended on how much you believed that it would.
It was certainly a unique experience and made even more memorable by the fact that Malekgala gave me traditional dress to wear there. She checked that I felt comfortable wearing it to church first, and I assured her that it was fine. What I didn't realise what that I was to be going into KFC dressed like that afterwards, and did feel a tad self-conscious then!
She also said to me in KFC that she'd talked to her dad and that it was fine for me to stay there longer if I wanted, to use it as a base from which to explore Lesotho so that I could save money on accommodation and food, and because she wasn't working she could show me places.
You won't be surprised to find that I took her up on her offer, though it was more to get to know this lovely family better than anything else. Over the next couple of days, we went into town, watched films on tv, walked up the small mountain behind the house in our hole-ridden converse, visited her grandma who lived in a little shed-sized hut next to a beautifully pristine small brick house that she used to live in with her husband and now didn't want to get dirty, ate pap and watched the three most popular South African soaps. When I decided I should go because, as fun as it was to chill for a bit and go round with her, I was quite wanting to see other parts of Lesotho and was running out of time before my placement at the SA ranch began, she practically begged me to stay longer, and so the next day we got up to go tot a place down the road where there were dinosaur footprints. Was supposed to be a long walk but before we'd even gone five minutes we met a guy who pointed to a dried up river bed where a collection of dinosaur footprints lay. I could kind of tell which some of them were - was definitely a stegosaurus and some two-legged spindly ones I don't know the name of. The three of us stood there for about two minutes though, alternatively glancing down at the floor and ten at each other kind of awkwardly, and after a while of that I asked if we should go now. I thought it was pretty cool though, if a slight anti-climax, but she was completely bemused by the whole thing and asked why on Earth I'd wanted to see that so explained how dinosaurs are a big thing when we're little and we're shown books of them, and about my brother jumping on logs and exclaiming they were dinosaur bones.
However, what was supposed to have been a day trip was already over and it was only 10am, and so we went into town and I bought a cheap copy of Gladiator and she bought some mandazis. She knew them by the name of fat cakes though, because 'if you eat too many, they give you a big bum and stop you looking sexy' - didn't I know that too well already!
The next day we went to Maseru - the capital of Lesotho, to have a look round and stay overnight with one of her cousins that lived there.
We even got a free lift down with a guy who'd given us a lift back home from town the previous day.
And we didn't particularly do anything but it was still great fun too-ing and fro-ing between the Red Cross shop, where she thought her cousin would be working, and then the little house where her cousin actually was and where we both made ourselves stomach inedible gloop (cold, sugarless maize porridge), then into town to use internet to find her other cousin's number because there wasn't really room for us at that cousin's house, a wander round, look at the new mall where I treated us both to pizza, then to find this new cousin, walk with him to the previous cousin's place to get our stuff, then to visit an aunt, and finally back into town to get a minibus in the other direction to his place.
His place though was the size of two beds and he lived there with his other cousin but his landlady/next-door neighbour let him and his cousin sleep on an inflatable mattress in her house and he let me and Malekgala have their bed in his house. Pretty hospitable, eh?
He also had some pretty good movies on the laptop he had because he worked for a little computer repair place, and we watched them late into the night. before getting up at 6am because he had to go to work and then getting three different minibus taxis back home, which we spent longer sitting in, waiting to fill up than sitting in actually on the move. So we got back feeling pretty tired but boy was it a couple of days I'll remember.
I spent another day at their house, since I felt bad just leaving the next day and was good to have a day off travel before heading back to SA.
I bought them a set of mugs and wrote a note on one of the Cumbria postcards I'd brought with me, thanking them for being so kind and generous and Malekgala got all teary when she read it.
Staying with them, as well as teaching me how to bathe standing in a bucket inside the house, and how to greet in Sesotho, showed me again how Africa is kind of developing off kilter, in that they had a tv and a car and so were obviously not poor but yet they still had no running water (they got it from a well down the road) and used a communal outside toilet (though in Southern Africa, holes in the ground have boxes built over them to turn them into Western-style toilets, which really just makes everything more difficult!). I also learnt that her Mum had died five years ago from AIDs (Lesotho apparently has the third highest rate in the world), and her Dad has HIV but is ok because he found out early enough and now takes drugs every day.
She'd also had to leave school early because her Dad had got ill and there hadn't been enough money and so was getting work as a waitress in SA.
I was going to re-enter SA via a border crossing a little south of Maseru and so headed back to the capital via a minibus taxi and a proper big bus (quite a novelty after two weeks of all minibuses!). The guy on the bus then went and found me a minibus taxi that was going to the town by the border I was crossing, which was really nice except it was an empty bus and so would have been waiting over an hour for it to fill up and leave. Fortunately I now knew about the other terminus up the road and so found one that was leaving right then. Once we arrived in that town, I then had to get a taxi to the borer crossing.
It was a very quiet crossing. A woman took my passport and stamped it before getting in her car to go somewhere but I checked the stamp and it was dated for February so I called after her to get it changed and she just wrote the correct date over it, which wasn't very official looking but she said it'd be fine. I then walked over the bridge separating the two countries (much easier than a huge desert or a croc and hippo infested river) to get my stamp for entry into SA, the date of which was a lot closer than the exit stamp, at a only a day wrong, but the place was just as relaxed, since I had to wander round and shout before anyone came.
And then I waited for an hour before getting my last vehicle to a little pretty, very quiet SA town called Rouxville, where there was a backpackers for me to have all to myself - probably just as well since my meal of ugali with tomato and lentil soup (homemade!) might have got some funny looks.
And now when I tell people I visited Lesotho, I still feel like I'm holding onto a glorious little secret because it was so much more than a visit but a wonderful, fascinating experience that I feel privileged to have had - and just when I thought that the best experiences of the trip had already been experienced!
Comments
Lesotho sounds brill. Want a demo of church dancing. Very heatwarming hearing about all these beautiful kind people you meet hugs Lynne Max
You always said it was stunning and seeing the photos I now understand why. Fantastic!