This
past weekend was just the escape I needed. I left my village and got a quiet
hitch up to Mohale’s Hoek. Then I did the usual MHoek things: showered,
chickened, and taxied up to Mafeteng, the next town north. I stopped at
Shoprite, the big grocery store, and picked up some grilled cheese ingredients
before I headed off to my friend Anthony’s house. He had been nice enough to
host me as I made my way north to Maseru. On the bus to his site, I was sitting
next to a guy who looked unassuming enough, but once we got talking, it was
clear he knew everything about world/news current events. I could not keep up.
It was quite impressive. When I got to Anthony’s house, we jammed to the new
Beyoncé album and Anderson Paak (listen to Come Down. I’m obsessed.) as we made
guacamole grilled cheeses. So good. Then we watched Concussion, a surprisingly
good movie with Will Smith about football players and the permanent brain
damage they sustain due to smashing their heads all the time.
The
next morning, I walked to the road to find a ride back to Mafeteng town. It
took forever for me to find any kind of ride, but eventually a 4+1 taxi,
closely followed by a combi (15-passenger taxi), stopped for me. I only started
to say, “Ke ea mafe-“ I’m going to mafe-, when he cut me off, and he was
like,”Fast! Get in!” I was like woah, woah, ok, and I hopped in. He sped off,
saying that he couldn’t let the combi catch up because the driver would get mad
that he was stealing his customers. He said that he wasn’t supposed to be
driving on this road. (little 4+1 taxis are only allowed in certain areas
unless they’ve specifically been hired out as “specials”). He said that he was
coming back from one of these specials. If the cops stopped him, he very
carefully instructed me to say that I had called him for a special to Morija (a
town between Maf and Maseru), that his surname was _____ but he’d never told me
his first name, that I knew to call him because of his sister named _____ who I
worked with at _____ school. I tried to remember all this to go along with his
elaborate scheme, but the cops didn’t end up stopping us. That is, until he got
onto the main road (where he was allowed to be) where this one cop was giving
him a hard time at a routine traffic stop. This cop and the driver were enemies
because the cop “tried to be in love with” the driver’s wife, and the cop said
he would use all his police powers to give this driver a hard time or
something. As such, the driver explained that he tries to keep everything with
his car scrupulously up to date so that this cop can’t catch him and won’t earn
any bribe money from him.
We emerged from the
traffic stop without a scratch, then the driver starts asking me about whoever
I was staying with, which is pretty normal. Like an idiot, I revealed that it
was a guy, not a girl, who I was staying with. After he asked some more
invasive questions, I convinced him that we were only friends. As I’ve already
explained many times here, in Lesotho, platonic friendships between males and
females do not exist, so he was completely incredulous that I could just
innocently stay at a guy’s house. He said that if a girl stayed at his house if
his wife was home, it’d all be very sterile, that he’d say good night to her at
night and then greet her again in the morning. But if his wife wasn’t home,
it’d be a different story. Sometimes these bontate disgust me. I tried to
explain that unlike a lot of Basotho men, most American men have a different
set of ethical standards in which they respect women enough not to come onto
them at every chance. I’m so tired of having this conversation.
Once we got to town,
I was happy to pay him and get out of his taxi, then I went to the hitch spot
where I quickly got into a super fast pickup going to Masianokeng, a town where
the highway junctions off to the east near Maseru. I didn’t even have to talk
to the two guys in the front seat because the famu music playing was too loud.
A trade off I’ll gladly take. They dropped me off, and not ten seconds later, I
spotted the PC SUV driving by and waved my arms for them to stop. There were 2
staff members inside who I don’t interact very much with, but they happily
picked me up. I’m not sure if they a) didn’t know I’m not technically in PC
anymore, or b) did know but didn’t care because staff still likes me, but hey,
I’ll definitely take it. I got out at the PC office where we parted ways. Now
my task would be to get to the US embassy to pick up my new personal passport.
I walked there, and when I arrived, I had fun talking to the employees in
Sesotho. They were asking me about my village and about what I was doing at my
school, and they were shocked at the price I had to pay for a gas cylinder in a
rural village. Then I picked up my new (big mama 52-pager) passport and they hole
punched my old one. Cool beans. Now I’m good to travel.
My next task would
be to walk to Pioneer mall for some Pick and Pay groceries and to the pharmacy
downstairs to get some malaria pills for my upcoming trip to Mozambique and
Malawi. I got the sketchy anti-malarials that Aline (previously a Liberia
volunteer) said make you crazy and make your hair fall out, etc., but they were
1/5 the price of the ones I had taken before, the ones I got from PC medical.
But now that I’m on my own, I have to pay for my own medicine and such. So I
got the cheap ones. But Aline said it would be ok because I wouldn’t be taking
them for very long, only a few weeks. We’ll see what happens…
That night, I was
supposed to go back to Morija to Lisa and Ryan’s house, as the next day they
were hosting the murder mystery party that Jen had been writing/planning. But
suddenly, I got some bad news. Lisa was suddenly being medevaced and Ryan would
be going with her. Sucks for her, and also sucks for us because we had lost our
venue. Jen was a champ, though, and quickly convinced Taylor to let us have the
party at his big house. My overnight plan also changed to staying in Mhoek with
Jen, and I went to the taxi rank to get a taxi to her stop. My favorite thing
about her (tiny) house is the fact that it is sort of sloth themed. She has a
sloth calendar where every month, there is a new adorable photo of a sloth to
seduce you. She also has a stuffed animal sloth and even sloth socks. Sloths
are becoming the new trendy thing, apparently. Goodbye mustaches, hello
slothies.
The next day,
Saturday, was murder mystery day. And it was a glorious day indeed. After a
morning run from the hotel through the field where they give driving lessons
and back, and some obligatory chicken and makoenyas, we all chilled at the
public bar for a bit before Jen and I headed to Taylor’s house to set up the
clues, make name tags, and get into character. I would be Sush Bot, the robot
butler. I borrowed one of Taylor’s seshoeshoe bow ties to go with my white
button-down shirt and black pants. With my hair pulled back into a neat bun,
Jen said I looked like I belonged in a hotel catering company.
Jen had written an
awesome script with many characters, and as each guest arrived, I gave them
their character name tags. As the butler, I was essentially Jen’s
assistant/stage manager. I had to make sure that the characters were following
the story as they should be, operate the light switches, dole out fake blood,
and I was also in charge of playing sound effects from an app on her phone
(thunder, crows, gunshots, etc.). All the people came dressed in character-
from the investigator to ‘me and ntate Mosotho to Bro PCV to overenthusiastic
PCV to specific PC staff members and individual departed PCVs. As the story
progressed, lots of characters died, lots of fake blood was smeared on necks
and faces, and the acting was superb. We couldn’t have asked for more
enthusiasm from anyone involved. It was so much fun.
The next morning,
after we all emerged from Taylor’s spare room where we’d piled in with our
sleeping bags for the night, we tag teamed cleaning his house, then I promptly
got out of there to go back home. I was stupid, thinking that getting a taxi
out of MHoek would be fine for once. Wrong. I got on one taxi that shoveled the
passengers onto another taxi, then onto a different taxi, which turned around
and went back to town to troll for more passengers. Ugh. This just convinced me
that it’s the hitch life all the way for me. That day, I reached my Basotho
quota way too early, with squawking “Hi!”s and “Lekhooa!”s and some (drunk?)
old ntate rambling to me about whatever the heck he was talking about in
whatever language he was trying to speak. It was neither Sesotho nor isiXhosa
(the languages spoken here), so maybe this was what he thought was English? I told
him off in Sesotho, telling him that he wasn’t saying anything, what kind of
mess are you trying to pull here? Ke eng, joale, ntate? What the heck is this,
ntate? The taxis back home were sleepy and long, but I was glad to get back and
take a nap. It was a crazy long weekend, but so worth it.
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