In mid-January the father of a friend died. As I have written before, the death of a family member in Lesotho is a huge financial burden as the deceased's family is expected to feed the whole village the day of the funeral. In the case of our friends it also meant getting everything needed to their village - a three hour taxi or bus ride followed my an seven kilometre walk into the village. An alternative is to hire a friend with a four wheeled drive vehicle to drive all the way in. Of the three hour drive in, two hours are for the last 30 kms and that is when the roads are dry.
Early in the week before the funeral, it rained and rained and rained. The friend with the four by four was not available, so I became part of an alternate plan, driving out on a different, better road with the supplies and other things, meeting Ntate Kuena at some rendezvous from which everything would be transported by donkey into the village. My little SUV was packed to the limit. As I surveyed it I could not imagine the effort of hauling all this stuff, some two hours through the mountains on donkeys, so that the funeral could be held. Ntate Kuena's wife and an elderly aunt drove out with me, squeezed in among the bags of carrots and beets and cabbages, maize meal and rice, pots and bowls and "what what", as the people here would say. I asked about the tough walk ahead and the wife's stoic response to a task that would have overwhelmed me was, "There is no choice, it just has to be done."
I didn't fully realize how much "had to be done" until we met Ntate Kuena on some distance section of the road and unloaded the packed little vehicle. The three little donkeys Ntate Kuena had with him looked woefully inadequate for the pile of things on the side of the road; plus it was now getting late in the afternoon. Where I would have been complaining and fretting, my Basotho friends simply began to do what had to be done. A passing Basotho 'stranger' inquired about what was happening and then offered to fetch two of his own donkeys to help. I left once all the bags for the donkeys were packed. I wanted to get home before dark, and left my friends on the side of the road, facing a two hour journey in the waning light. They made it, but later confirmed that it had been a challenge, especially for the elderly aunt.
We then had a couple of days of hot dry weather, so we decided to brave the direct road in to attend the funeral. Our little SUV made it in, this time packed with people, catching a few rocks on the underside in the very rough patches. I was fretting all the way in, as the sun seemed to be battling it out with a band of gathering clouds. If it rained while we were in there, would we get out? It rained. Two heavy showers. We tried to leave after the first shower, but the road was so muddy that touching the brakes locked up the wheels and I had little control when going downhill. I gave up after a couple hundred metres, and we thought we would wait and see if it would dry up a bit. It didn't, it rained some more. We had come prepared with a tent and sleeping bag, but were not looking forward to camping for the night with more rain threatening.
Another friend of Ntate Kuena, one with a four by four, had also driven in, and some of the mourners in attendance needed to get out that evening. He agreed to drive them out. The plan became that I would follow him out. He had a chain, such as it was, and would pull me through should it be too muddy or too steep for for my untried SUV. Off we went. I was worried about getting home before it was dark when I had hauled out the supplies. There was no way I would be getting back to the tarred road before dark on this trip. It was a trip to remember, bumping and grinding through the mud, up steep and rocky sections, sliding down muddy inclines; the last 8 kms in the dark. However, by then I had gained a whole lot of appreciation for and confidence in my little Honda. This story ends with a unabashed endorsement of the 1996 all wheel drive Honda CR-V. The road was even worse than I had anticipated as there had been more rain further along, but neither mud nor grade nor dark held us back. There were even moments when I had to come to a stop on a muddy steep incline, but no problem. That little CR-V pulled us through everything that road had to offer. Still, it was an immense comfort to have another vehicle with us, just in case something had gone wrong. I was very relieved when we got back home in Maseru at about 9:30 p.m., and I am not so sure I will go looking for that kind of driving again anytime soon. Whew, it was adventure enough for this old guy.
Wendy however, lives for adventure. This week she had time off from school, so let's be off to the mountains was her refrain. Off we went again. Fortunately all roads are not as bad as the one to Ntate Kuena's village, but it still took three and a half hours to travel 120 kms. The end of the trip was a pleasant surprise, allowing me to even entertain the thought of considering that trip again sometime in the future. After driving up and down and around through the mountains we came out on a broad rolling plateau. Here there were fewer maize fields and much more wheat grown, and the road, while still rough and winding, was without the steep grades of the mountains.
We arrived in Semongkong, our destination, at mid day. A horse culture lives on, here, deep in the mountains. On both sides of the dusty main street, tied to poles and posts and hitching rails, were saddled horses waiting for their owners to conclude their business. Men, women, and young people rode past, at ease and at home in their saddles, riding to and from villages near and far. The tourist information on Lesotho makes frequent mention of the Basotho pony, but here was the first time I had seen it in living action, truly part of the day to day life and culture of the Basotho.
Later that day we hiked into Maletsunyane Falls. Sitting in the mist and spray near the bottom of the falls was enjoyable, yet it was the four km hike that offered some of the more interesting vignettes of Basotho life. Along the trail the horses and riders were coming and going. Herd boys with their flocks of sheep, crossed our path, and most interesting was watching the wheat harvest.
In one field a large group of people were working. It was a picture that reminded me of the story of Ruth in the Bible. The men with their small scythes cut handfuls of the standing grain. Behind them came the women who gathered the handfuls and tied them into bundles with grass for twine. Then they carried the bundles on their heads, singing and ululating as they went, to where other men were carefully piling the bundles into a water shedding stack where they would be left to dry further. The pile was being built right beside an exposed reasonably flat rock outcrop. When dried, the bundles would be broken open and the wheat spread out on the rock and "threshed" by oxen walking around and around over the stalks until the heads were broken open and the kernels would collect in the shallow recesses of the rock. Walking through the field and seeing the odd missed heads of grain it was easy to imagine Ruth gleaning in the fields of Boaz, Boaz instructing his workers to leave the odd extra handful of cut grain for her, and the oxen at the threshing floor.
I was witnessing a scene, foreign to our western experience, that has been repeated across the world for millennium. A scene, where in such a real sense, man still lives by the sweat of his brow. In some small way, witnessing this scene, I felt a connection with the human spirit which has struggled and survived through the millennium and has brought us to where we are today. Without my forebears and the burdens and hardships they endured and overcame, rather than adventure this day, might I have been somewhere else, harvesting my daily bread, in some such similar manner.
Khotso,
~ Benno ~
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