2 November 2014: Thaba Bosiu

Today we drove in the PC bus to Thaba Bosiu, which is basically the most important historical site in Lesotho. This is where King Moshoeshoe [“mo-shway-shway”] (the founder of the Basotho nation) set up a base for the Basotho during the war against the Ndebele people in the early 1800s. The mountain also served as a stronghold during other wars, like the Free State-Basotho war in the 1850s, in which the Free State’s forces tried to take land in Lesotho. Thaba Bosiu was the only stronghold that wasn’t taken by the Free State in the war of the 1860s. The name Thaba Bosiu literally translates to Night Mountain. Why? Because legend states that when the enemy tried to storm the mountain (more like a plateau, actually), they would wait away from the mountain from a distance during the day, and they decided to attack under the cover of night. As they waited at the base as night fell, the mountain would grow during the night, rendering it impossible for them to reach the top.

                We climbed up there and wandered around amongst the ruins of Moshoeshoe’s house and the tiny village that was once there. There was a giant sandy area where apparently, people bring their dirty clothes to wash them in the sand. I guess once you shake all the sand out after grinding it into your clothes, they’re supposed to end up cleaner. I didn’t buy it. We also found some herb that the Basotho (LCFs and staff accompanying us) were sticking up their noses, just walking around with little tufts of leaves poking out of their nostrils. They said it was to clear your sinuses, as the leaves were quite pungent. It looked like everyone had little green mustaches. It started to rain pretty hard, and a lot of us ran down the rocky path back to the welcome center where the PC bus had parked. Most people hadn’t brought rain jackets (it’s impossible to predict the weather here. If there’s not a cloud in the sky, it might rain in a few hours), so we were freezing and decided to go back to the training village ASAP, deciding to skip the probably long tour of the fake village they had constructed that was supposed to represent the early villages of Lesotho. Funny, they looked from the top of the hill like the villages we were living in. Probably more for the tourists staying in the city.