Loose Ends

It is about time I tied up a couple of loose ends as I have not made an entry for nearly a month. I have gotten too busy at work. Wendy has said I never brought so much work home when working for the provincial government, and that I need to find a better balance. One casualty has been time for updating our blog.

Mountains III: This goes back to October and my trips to the mountains with my finance clients. The second trip was with my “client” who is into trading. He is able to secure things in Maseru that folks in the mountain villages value, things that often have little value here. If he can get them to his home village the folks there are most willing to pay with grain, sorghum or maize. The problem is transport as I again learned. This time the trip was longer in kilometers, but better roads. The catch was that the last 4 kilometres was a hike in.

So, after a three hour drive we walked 40 minutes into his village. There we loaded up donkeys with sorghum, and back to the truck. Unload the sorghum, and load up the items for the village. Back to the village, load up the donkeys with more sorghum, and back out to the truck. Those little donkeys are so tough.

These photos are from a different trip but they give

a picture of what the little donkeys carry.

Then it was the drive home, up and down incredible grades with about 800-1000 pounds of sorghum. The costs of using a Beautiful Gate truck were M600, and I was concerned about what kind of return Ntate Edward would be able to make on his investment. I need not have worried. He is doing fine, if you consider folks showing up at his door at 5:30 a.m. in hopes of getting sorghum directly from the mountains. Apparently the imported sorghum sold in the stores just does not compare. Ntate Edward spent a few extra Maloti here in Maseru to get the sorghum ground, and now folks almost line up to obtain ground sorghum direct from the mountains. He looks to recoup his investment with a healthy return. I am most pleased for him.

The challenge, as in my trip with Ntate Kuene, is transportation. The villages can produce food products, the challenge is getting the product to market. The subsidized Beautiful Gate vehicle will not often be available.

Water and Electricity: The saga of utilities at Beautiful Gate continues. But I have learned that if us Makhooha (white guys) might have been a bit more willing to ask the Basotho staff some questions we might be further down the road, especially with the power.

We do have water. And I am so proud of our Basotho guys. They were the ones that make the final arrangements with the water authority and figured out how to set up an effective, though interim, connection that means we no longer have to worry about running out of water.

And, when explaining my understanding of our electricity connection woes to the Basotho staff I work with directly, they pointed out most clearly the steps one needs to follow to obtain a connection. Yes, it is a bit of a tedious process, but had we Makhooha been a bit more humble and only asked and then followed the process we would have power by now. Rather we are finding ourselves having to apologize to the power company for our rather demanding attitude and only now begin the process. With Christmas upon us it may be late January before we get through the process and connected, but at least we are on the right track now.

The next entry (above) is a further update, but I wouldn't want to call 'her' a loose end. :)

~ Benno ~