Thaba Basiu with my IB1 crew

Sunday, November 18th. (This one is out of sequence. It just took me a while to upload all the pics. Hope you enjoy them!)

Last Sunday I celebrated Byron's birthday (our youngest son) by taking a whole crew of guys...and one lovely girl, on a hike, since Byron wasn't here to celebrate! What a great day it was.

I had so much fun watching these all-too-serious, very dedicated students just having a blast being carefree. For most of them this was their first trip up to this historic mountain, and the information provided by the guide before we went up was news to some. For me it was a great pleasure to be able to share an important part of Basotho history with my students.

On that magical plane between grass and sand. Indeed, this sand on the top of the mountain was believed to have magical qualities so that it cannot be taken off the mountain. It is very, very fine sand, but the guys that got their hair full of sand figured that it COULD be carried off there quite easily!
The guys decided...well...with a bit of prompting, to 'dig in' to that lovely sand!
("This is what we sometimes do at the beach in Canada" ;-)




No sooner did we get this fellow buried, but...

Yeh... His cell phone rang and he was up out of the sand as if something had bitten him! 'Twas funny for sure. The ubiquitous cell phone.
One other guy was talking on his cell phone, and I asked him later who he'd been talking to on the top of the mountain and he replied that he'd phoned his mom to tell her where he was. Although she's lived here in Lesotho all her life, she has not been to this historic mountain. This is not uncommon as it's just another one of those things that lack of time and money make prohibitive.

Not to be disrespectful or anything, but it was just fun to be able to play. Here we have a miraculous 'raising from the dead' by our 'preacher'.

Here the dancing man is just celebrating the day.

Okay, THIS part is a serious moment for me. Whenever I look at this pic, I am reminded to say a prayer for these wonderful, fine young men and women that they can dance in the face of death--for themselves at least--that they will make wise choices and stay free from HIV Aids.

A gorgeous promontory. I'm not sure that's the correct geological term since it doesn't stick out into the ocean...other than the great ocean of blue sky.
Some of the guys beside King Moshoeshoe the First's grave. I like it much better than the next one...
This one is King Moshoeshoe the Second's grave. Pretty fancy compared to the rest of the royal graves on top of the mountain. King Moshoeshoe II was the father of our current King Letsie. He died in a car accident in 1996.

This is some albino member of the royal family...not an anomaly here.

In the distance you may be able to make out the peak that the Basotho Hat is designed after. I forget its name...

So...that was our journey. What a fabulous day it was for me. Great fun!

In