Thoughts on Lesotho

We landed in the dark. So our first glimpse was only lights spread out - in and around the hills of Maseru.

Security is obviously not the issue here that it is in Johannesburg. The Director of Beautiful Gate, who picked us up at the airport, pulled into his home, closed but did not lock the gate, didn’t lock the vehicle with all of our stuff in it, and we go in for two hours to visit and have supper. This would be something unheard of in Johannesburg where much of life is lived behind locked and barred gates and doors.

There are paved roads in Lesotho. However, some residential streets do not even compare to lanes or alleys in Red Deer. Rather they look like trails created simply from use. The street to the house where we are currently staying.

Herdsmen guide their cows, often gaunt, along major and other city roadways, seeking what little grazing they might find this late in the winter.

A woman, bent over from the waist, sweeps her yard, removing dust and debris from the hard-packed soil or court yard between her house and her garden plot.

Dry brown hills and dusty vacant lots await the end of winter and the spring rains of September to breathe life and colour back into the land.

Houses of all shapes and sizes are seemingly randomly scattered on slopes and in valleys. Some large, beautiful, and cared for; others tiny, run down, and cluttered; yet others stuck at some stage of construction, awaiting the return of the lot owner from South Africa with his/her savings to complete another stage of construction.

Numberless people, mostly men wait about on the streets, seemingly loitering, but more likely just hoping for a chance for a job. Others, by the dozens, man little booths selling produce, snacks, hot food cooked over portable fire pits or other goods. Then lunchtime comes when hundreds of others swarm out of ramshackle places of business, and flood the booths, lining up to buy a lunch.

Taxis, taxis, taxis. Everywhere. All with a wide yellow stripe down their sides. They stop in the most incongruous places to pick up or drop off a fare, incessantly beeping their horns to attract fares, invite other drivers to move over, or maybe just add to the noise and congestion.

The acrid smell of coal smoke hanging in the air, testament to those with means and a fireplace, able to heat their homes during the cool evening and early mornings.

Beautiful Gate, where I will be volunteering, is a hive of construction actively.
What started six years ago as one woman’s concern for the plight of three abandoned babies left likely to die in a local hospital, is now unfolding beneath the trades men’s hands as a community care centre with buildings in various stages of completion that will house up to 60 abandoned or orphaned babies, a clinic, a pre-school, and an admin unit.

The “bob cat” crew is hewing order and structure out of the hard packed grounds of the new centre - an interesting take on economic development. After having a bob cat in for one bit of landscaping, the Director realized that for the cost of the bob cat and its operator he could hire about nine community men to do the same work. (Another major economic development piece is the 40+ employees at the Centre who come from the local community, employees who provide everything from cooking and cleaning to child care services to professional nursing, social work, play therapy and office administration services.)

Blankets. Ubiquitous. Not every one wears a blanket, but it truly is a most common garment, slung over one shoulder and pinned on the other, or for the women, more often wrapped about the shoulders and pinned in front. But all keeping the cool winter winds and cold at bay.

Awaking in the morning to the city coming alive. Vehicle traffic sounds mixed with the call of the laughing doves and the crow of roosters.

Trying to wrap my tougue and mind around new words and sounds: Lumela. O phela joang? Kea leboha. Lebitso la hao u mang. And names: ‘M’e Matsepo, ‘M’e Manyakallo, Ausi Masema, Abuti Kabelo. Figuring out when an ‘l’ sounds like an ‘l’, and when it sounds like a ‘d’?

Africa, O Africa. :) :)

~ Benno ~