With about a week left until school starts, Lea and I decided to go to Katse Dam (the biggest wall dam in Africa, supplying some jillion kilowatts of electricity to Lesotho and South Africa and, with the help of a series of tunnels and reservoirs, supplies Gauteng province in South Africa with most of its water). I’ve been to 8 out of 10 districts so far, and going to Katse would tackle another one- Thaba Tseka, the central district. This just leaves desolate Mokhotlong to finish out the 10. On Tuesday, I headed down my muddy hill to the road. I thought Bo was too distracted to follow me, so I didn’t chain him up as I usually do when I leave, but about halfway down I saw him running after me. Back up the hill to chain him up. I ran down again and squished onto the taxi and made it to Quthing. Seeing that the taxi to Mohale’s Hoek was completely empty, I decided to walk down the road to get a hitch. I got 2 different ones to Mohale’s Hoek. The first was with a super cheery guy who dropped me off at Askop (the junction to go to the Tele bridge border gate) where he was working as an engineer working on the road to the border. Then a bit later, I got another ride with a man who asked me how much it is to Mohale’s Hoek (as in, how much do taxis charge), as if I’d pay for a hitch. Psh. I told him I didn’t have money, and he was like ugh whatever, get in. Then he got mad at me for “knocking down his door” which I later realized meant slamming his door shut too hard. Calm down, dude. Your car will be fine. If you didn’t want a rando in your car, why’d you stop for me? A silent ride followed, and I made it to Mohale’s Hoek soon enough.
The next morning, Lea and I got a hitch up to Mafeteng, then another to the Masianokeng junction with this family in a big van where the mom ran an after-school study group for orphans and made sure they got fed. PCVs and other foreign volunteers are fine and all, but it’s women like this one, generous with a heart of gold, that will actually make any kind of difference in this country. The most significant change has to come intrinsically with people who genuinely want to help their fellow citizens.
From that junction, we got two different back-of-a pickup hitches to Nazareth, then a sedan picked us up and took us all the way to Cassie’s village, Marakabei, where we’d be staying for the night. Her dog, Maluti, is so cute, rolling and flopping over in the hopes that you’ll scratch its belly. The afternoon was spent sitting on the floor sending absurdly silly voice messages back and forth to friends, and we couldn’t stop laughing for hours. We woke up to some of Cassie’s awesome pancakes, and soon got a hitch to Thaba Tseka camptown with this super nice guy who was telling me all about the herd boy life. He was talking about how they trade diamonds that they find for AK47s, and how they’re all big and muscular because they eat milk and meat all the time from stealing and eating other herdboys’ sheep. He also talked about how this guy Matekane, the richest man in Lesotho, came from around where we were driving, and he made his fortune building roads and doing other construction. Now he has founded Maluti Sky, the fancy new Basotho airline, and he “never travels on the ground anymore.” Hitches provide some of the most interesting conversations.
The guy went into town with us and we bought him a coke to thank him for the ride. He even took us back to the junction that goes to Katse. After a while of waiting and many rejections, we finally got on a big, flatbed truck going all the way to Katse. Direct flight! We sat in the back on top of hay bales, then when those were delivered along the way, we sat on the 50kg papa sacks. It was drizzling almost the whole time and it got pretty cold as we climbed in elevation. When they’d stop to unload something, we’d yell out to greet the people, and one guy along the way, when he learned we knew Sesotho, was smiling, jokingly saying, “Ach. You people!” It took about 2.5 hours to get to Katse because of all the delivery stops, but finally the load of cokes, cinderblocks, and gas tanks made it to town, along with us, wet and wind-battered. But that was definitely one of the more fun truck hitches I’ve gotten.
We jumped down and walked in the direction of the lodge, which was through a security gate and at the end of what was basically Suburbia: a nice little neighborhood with matching houses and sidewalks and street lights. Weird. Apparently it houses dam workers, as well as 4 white girls we happened to see as we walked through it. It turns out they were Americans too. We went up to talk to them as they were walking up to their house, and we were not even finished exchanging pleasantries when Lea blurts out, “Hey, random question, but can we stay with you guys tonight?” They were kind of taken aback, not sure how to react, and just said “Uh…let us call our supervisor and we’ll get back to you.” By the way PCVs crash at each other’s houses all the time, even if you’ve never really met the person, I guess he assumed they’d let us right in. We had planned on camping at the old Katse info center, but it was still raining and it was quite a walk away, so staying here would actually be ideal. From the way they reacted, we assumed that they’d just gotten to Lesotho, but we learned that they’d been here the same length of time as we had. They worked for some Baptist mission something or other.
Lea and I went to the lodge where we planned to eat dinner. We sat inside, reading and watching the rain, until the dining room opened We were the only ones in the whole restaurant. We both ordered trout almandine, because they catch fresh trout from the dam, but the “trout” was huge and pink, obviously salmon. It was still really good, especially after our long day of truck riding. We finished eating and went back to the girls’ house to see if they had “talked to their supervisor” as they told us they would. They said crashing was a no-go (as we assumed), but they gave me some American candy out of one of FOUR ENORMOUS PLASTIC BINS of sugar and snacks. Man, these Baptists really know how to send a care package. They seem very sheltered compared to PCVs, and thought it was really cool (as do we) that PCVs live in rural villages and that we’ve done a bunch of cool stuff and traveled around. We walked about 2 miles to the Katse Dam information center, where we were told there was free camping. We reached the new info center, which was a huge, beautiful building. We kind of assumed this was it, so we started to set up (minus the tent, which Lea forgot, but we had borrowed Cassie’s tarp). Soon, a security guard walked up and told us that the old info center was farther down the road. Back on our feet, back in the rain. We set out our sleeping bags under a tree there where we hoped we wouldn’t get too wet. From there in the dark, we could see the dam wall with its bright lights outlining the top.
In the morning, we could actually see the thing in the light. It was enormous! Definitely worth a quick visit, but soon enough we were packed up and ready to go back. We waited forever for a hitch out, then finally got one in a small semi that took us to the junction to go back to Thaba Tseka. After about an hour of walking in a drizzle, we were elated to have flagged down a pickup carrying food to town. We sat in the back among many bags of various food items and, guess what, got rained on again as we rode to town. We got a lunch of super greasy makoenyas and Russians, then walked down the road where we got in a truck that was going all the way to Maseru. We stopped briefly in Marakabei again to meet Cassie on the side of the road to return her tarp and to give her some produce we’d gotten in town for her. Then we hauled it all the way back to Masianokeng. From there, we were so happy to get a hitch inside a car for once. It was with a rich guy who had traveled to China and wants to do the Roof of Africa motorcycle race next year. He can do all this because he works for a diamond mine in Mokhotlong. That explains it. In the downpour, he drove to Morija to pay for his daughter’s school fees. Coincidentally, this was a new PCV Ryan’s school, and we happened to find him walking into the school building and talked for him for a bit. The driver went along his way and stopped to pick up several other people. At one point, the back seat was completely full, complete with a little girl standing and a little boy sitting on my lap.
That guy dropped us off just past Mafeteng, and we soon waved down a car. We opened the door and started in on the required pleasantries, but the driver was just like, “Get in! Hurry! Just get in!” so we obliged, and he sped off. This guy’s name was Jese and he wore a bright purple button down shirt and small glasses. He was absolutely racing to Mount Moorosi to drop his friend off at work on time. I almost thought about going all the way to Mount Moorosi with him, as it’s the last stop before my village, but it would be too late to catch a taxi to my village by the time we got there. This dude was hilarious, making us laugh so hard. Turns out he knows Melinda (a new PCV near Mount Moorosi).
Pumped up by his energy, Lea and I bounded into the hotel to meet Katie. We decided we’d stay at her house for the night. While waiting for her village taxi to fill up, we pigged out on papatas (like English muffins), fried fish, and chocolate. We got going and I was sitting next to some guy lamenting Lesotho’s expensiveness keeping the cycle of poverty alive here. We got to Katie’s stop and trudged through the mud in the dark, half lost. We finally made it and I entertained myself by playing with her cat named Mokopu (meaning pumpkin in Sesotho).
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