Independence week (roughly)

I’ve been really lazy about writing, so I figured I should change that. Lesotho’s independence day is October 4, and the entire week in which October 4th lies is a holiday. So basically I had no school. My mother wanted to come and visit, so she ended up arriving in Bloemfontein September 24th, in the evening, the Wednesday before independence week. I met her in Bloemfontein the next day and we took the car she rented to cape town. I actually drove the entire way, as mom was a little nervous about driving on the opposite side of the road from normal. It’s a good 10-hour drive from bloem to cape town, and it’s a good thing in a way mom wasn’t driving because it gave her a chance to see the landscape of south Africa, which I had already seen a lot of. But driving that long was kind of exhausting. I got to cape town almost comatose. And hungry. We dropped our stuff of at the hotel and went to a tappas restaurant for dinner. I love good food. And this was good. It made me happy. And there was even a flourless chocolate cake with whipped cream for desert. My spirits somewhat boosted, we returned to the hotel, where I discovered the delights of the television, specifically the bbc channel. This probably doesn’t sound too exciting to most, but I don’t get to watch news often, so I enjoyed it. I even enjoy reading us weekly and people magazine these days, I’m so starved for news and western-ishness. That was a really embarrassing admission.
We slept in a little on Friday and when we woke up we headed to the waterfront, which is a posher shopping area of cape town. I was in desperate need of some shopping. Specifically I needed jeans and bras, and socks. Mission successful. I managed to get all three, though the jeans were a bit of a sad purchase. I’ve become attached to my old jeans, with their elephant patches on the butt. Sigh.
Lunch consisted of hagen-daaz ice cream. Best lunch EVAR (with hamster sauce too – sam, another volunteer’s, contribution). Three scoops in a waffle cone. Yes, I felt like a pile of lard afterwards, but in my defence the third scoop was free if I got the other two, so I felt obligated to do so.
After lunch we headed back towards long street, to the green market. Basically, this is an area off long street filled with booths of African arts and crafts for sale. My mother seemed to like it a lot. And I found an ostrich egg painted with…WARTHOGS!!! Oh happy days. Needless to say it was purchased. From there we headed to dinner at a Kurdish restaurant, which was nice. I miss Mediterranean/ middle eastern food.
Saturday was spent going to table mountain, the castle, and district 6. we did table mountain first. The view from the top is pretty amazing. I met a couple of guys advertising abseiling off the mountain and got talking with them. I asked if they had tried abseiling in semonkong, in Lesotho, down the side of a waterfall. They said that the abseil off table mountain had been the longest in the world until semonkong took that away. We couldn’t stay at table mountain too long because of the other stuff we wanted to see, so we just walked around for a bit and then headed back down on the cable cars.
the castle was something my mother really wanted to see, I think mostly for the antique furniture, so we went there next. It was basically a museum of furniture, with some art thrown in. I thought some of the antiques were pretty cool. I like old things, especially if I can find out the history behind them.
District 6 is an area of cape town that had house black Africans, jews, and other “undesirables” until it was declared a white only area of cape town. Then all of the families were forced out. This occurred in the late ‘60’s I think, so many of the families kept ties to the area and formed a group to attempt to re-enter the district. When apartheid ended their cases were reviewed and many families were allowed to reclaim their homes. A museum was set up in memory of all of this. It was a pretty interesting museum. It had a bunch of relics like old street signs from the neighborhood, and the center of the first floor was covered with a map where all of the families that had returned to the neighborhood could write their names.
All that took most of the day. The next day, Sunday, we drove down to the cape of good hope. Basically, there is cape town proper, and then south of it is this peninsula with a bunch of small coastal towns that can be visited, and then there’s the cape. So we stopped off at a few places on the way. One was a vineyard, which we got to wander around. We also had a wine-testing. We visited a garden as well, and a couple of small towns. Then to the cape, which is actually a big park. Right inside the park a nasty accident had just happened. Someone drove up to tell a ranger about it as we were buying tickets to go in. a motorcyclist had been hit and it looked pretty bad. We drove past that to cape point, where we walked up the cape to the old lighthouse, and I walked further out towards the new lighthouse. There were whales playing around in the ocean, and the view was amazing. It was also kinda cool to see the meeting of 2 oceans. After that, we went to the cape of good hope and then headed out of the park. On the way out, we saw some baboons. They have funny butts J. Then we headed back up the opposite side of the peninsula to visit simon’s town, where the jackass penguins are. From there we went to dinner at this pretty cool restaurant right on the water. Waves broke onto it. And I finally got some good, fresh seafood. And a bunch of other food to eat. I like to eat. That was an all-day event, so we went back to the hotel.
The next day we left early to return to Lesotho. Another really long trip. Really long. I think we left at about 7:30 in the morning and didn’t arrive home until 11 pm. I really didn’t want to be driving in Lesotho after dark, but oh well. It’s pretty scary driving. There are no street lights, there are pot holes you can’t see, and there was at least one unmarked speed hump that I flew over. And many night drivers in this country don’t understand that you should turn your brights off when encountering another car. But we made it, as did the car. And I slept. The next day I showed my mother around the camp town. The day after that we wandered around my village to see the sights, and walked to the makhaleng river which is the border between Lesotho and south Africa. As this is a border with no post, it’s not legal to actually cross the river, but those rules are ignored by most herd boys looking for places to graze their animals. So while we were sitting by the river we saw a couple herds cross the river. Directly on the other side is a xhosa farmer’s land. You can actually see his house from Lesotho. He put a wire fence up around his land, but the herd boys had cut it to allow their animals to graze. My ‘m’e was saying that the farmer sometimes would just sit in his house with binoculars watching for trespassers to call the police. He had also threatened to shoot the animals and even the herd boys. Illegal crossings are a big problem all around Lesotho because the border isn’t very tight. People will actually cross and steal other people’s animals sometimes. And a few months ago a south africa farmer a few miles south of my village but on the border had enough problems that he crossed over to Lesotho, talked with the chief of the village, and organized a community meeting. At the meeting he stood up, said “now that you are all here I have something to say,” took out a gun, and downed as many people as he could before he was stopped. So the borders are a bit tense.
We also went to the orange river, which is the border between mohale’s hoek and quthing districts. The makhaleng flows into the orange, and then they flow through south Africa to the Indian ocean.
Another day we headed up to the kome caves near maseru. These are houses that were built in caves in the side of a mountain. They were built as hiding places from the cannibals that lived in the area. There used to be a lot of cannibals in the country, before moshoeshoe 1 unified the country. The day after that we went to the mohale dam, the small of 2 large dams that Lesotho and south Africa built together to supply south Africa with water (the other dam is katse). It’s a really pretty area, that would be even prettier after receiving some rain. Getting there involved going up into the mountains in the middle of the country. We took a bunch of winding roads on the edge of the mountains, including one pass name the “god help me” pass. Going to the dam took the entire day.
The next day we had a family dinner with my host family. It was nice. We all cooked together and then sat down at a table together and ate.
My mother got to go to school with me one day, as well, to see me teach and see what a basotho school looks like. That same night we went to have dinner at my host sister’s house. The next day my mother left. I saw her off to the border and spent the night in Lesotho doing some work on the computer. The next day I returned home.