My
next stop after leaving my village was to Quthing camp town to finally ship
that dang box of mine (see “shipping” post for the struggle that was trying to
ship it a few weeks before). I made sure to bring enough cash with me this
time. At the post office, I endured a downright comical process of wallpapering
my box with R1623 of stamps, the highest denomination of stamp being R5. So
here I am, taking a glue stick to entire pages of stamps and slapping them on
the top and each side of this box, which is also almost entirely covered by red
duct tape at this point just to keep it from falling apart. I told the post
lady that in the US, they can just print one stamp with the total amount on it.
“Oh, we’re far, far from that,” she said. I really hope it all works out and
that this dang box arrives alive. I did get a tracking number though, so hopefully
that’ll lessen the chances of it being totally lost in the ether.
Finally free
of that burden, I walked out of town and quickly found a hitch to Mohale’s Hoek
with an architect guy who pointed out this skeleton of a building that he
designed. The whole time I’ve been in Lesotho, that frame has been just like
that, never being built on, but he didn’t seem to find it too problematic.
After
a couple days doing the usual shower/chicken/internet in Mohale’s Hoek, I got a
taxi to the town to the north, Mafeteng, then got on another taxi to my friend
Jeff’s site, where I’d be spending a few days. Yeah, I was out of my village,
but I wanted to do kind of a farewell tour and go to a few friends’ houses
before I left for my Southern Africa wanderings.
Hanging
out with Jeff usually results in spontaneous music-making and/or getting into
some kind of hilarity, mostly because he goes nowhere without his ukulele or
bass, and because he can just instantly make friends with anyone, this “anyone”
usually leading to some adventurous situation. This time, it proved true on
both accounts.
It
was a Saturday, and normally at Jeff’s school, they have Saturday study, which
consists of some students showing up to school to do some extra lessons. But
mostly, Jeff is the only teacher there. It was exam time for the students
taking their national exit exams, so the Form Cs and Es were looking for help
studying for their upcoming math(s) exam. I went in to help the Form Cs, since
I’d never taught Form E before, and we went through a bunch of questions on an
old exam. I thought it went well, and was confirmed of that fact when some
students came over to Jeff’s house later that day and thanked me for helping
them, and that they had understood well what I had reviewed with them. Ah, I
kind of missed teaching right then, being away from teaching at my own school
for a few weeks at that point.
Then
our pal Ben showed up and told us about the sh*tstorm happening in his village,
the details of which I won’t go into here, but which forced him to vacate his
village for at least a few days, leading him to stay with Jeff. As soon as he
arrived, we got working on what we had been excited to make: a podcast. Now,
what we call a “podcast” here among the volunteers is mostly just a long and
rambling voice note, mostly on a specified topic, broadcast in our Whatsapp
groups. Jeff had taken the concept to the next level with actual production and
editing and sound mixing, leaving the rest of us in the dust, and I wanted to
make a legit podcast with him. Our podcast, which I think I posted here a long
time ago, was about Martin Gray Marvin Gaye’s song “Ain’t No
Mountain High Enough” and how it’s really about a mountain-loving pig and how
the whole concept is just a sham. Have a listen,
if you haven’t. It’s great.
So
there’s the music-making (our podcast did include original musical interludes),
and here’s the hilarious situation. One night after some skillet pizza-making, we
followed the sound of drumming to the chief’s house, which was for the chief’s
daughter’s first birthday party. We got there and the mofumahali (female
chief/chief’s wife) took me into this big tent that was set up near their
house. What was happening inside was an important cultural celebration, and only
married women with children were allowed to go in, so I felt very privileged to
peek in. I have been sworn to secrecy as to exactly what the women were doing
in there, but I will tell you that I sat down next to one ‘me (who was explaining
to me what was going on, and spitting all over me whenever she opened her
mouth) and watched the secret dance that the women do at these one-year-old birthday
parties. The chief later explained to me that everyone has a big one-year party
for babies, and that it’s very important. Other birthdays don’t really matter
so much, though. What goes on in this tent is a closely-guarded secret kept
from men. Just to see, I asked some men standing outside what they thought was
going on inside, and they said that they had no idea, just some secret women’s
rituals that they were not allowed to know about. This kind of thing goes both
ways, though. When boys go to initiation school, they are also sworn to secrecy
about what goes on up on the mountain for those few months, even to other boys
who haven’t been.
After
I left the tent, Ben, Jeff, and I went into the chief’s house and we were
sitting on buckets/water containers and just talking with the chief and some of
his friends. As is typical of Basotho, they totally didn’t believe me that I
was just friends with Jeff and Ben, and not either married or otherwise
involved with either (or both) of them. And that just about covers the funny
situation side of things, other than some punny photos we took:
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