Talking history

So this week I hit the road to finally get started on some interviews here in Lesotho, or what I like to call, the interesting part of my project! It was good to get started with that and I had two really interesting people to talk to. One was a Catholic priest who works at the College of Education (the teacher training institute) and the other is a retired 81-year old who lives out in a small village outside Maseru (see last post about finding him). The attached photos are from that interview because he has rock art (very old stuff and very cool) on his property...the rock it is on forms one side of his sheep pen. Incidentally, stuff like that is what I love about Lesotho...some guy can just have history sitting in his back yard, he takes good care of it and is more than happy to show it to you. Many other places in the world, that would be a national park and you would have to pay big money to see it. Here, just an integrated part of life.
So anyway, I drove out there and had a great conversation with him. He snuck off to school at a young age when he was supposed to be herding animals. He made a deal with a friend who was also herding, each would spend one day at school and the other watching both sets of animals. He ended up as a teacher and worked his way up to the Field Commissioner for the Boy Scouts of Lesotho in the 1960s (as well as a founder of an anti-communist group that later merged with one of the major political parties) so he had some really interesting stuff to say about the days and years leading up to independence. Evidently the Boy Scouts played a big role in the actual celebration of Independence with them helping to get ready for it, acting as marshalls and also doing demonstrations like "pitching tents blindfolded" and other fun stuff like that!
Currently he has going what he calls his "little project" which is all the agricultural stuff you see in the photos. He has probably 2-3 acres until cultivation right now with a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as pigs and chickens. He has three hand-dug earthen dams and a series of pipes and taps so that he can water all parts of the extensive garden. Not bad for a little retirement side project. Evidently the Department of Agriculture is bringing people here as this is a model project and after walking it with him, I can see why!
So yea, life is good. Fieldwork is tough to get started but very rewarding once you get into it. I need to cut this off now because I am going to an international cricket match over in South Africa today--South Africa vs Kenya. Should be a good time. Fortunately it is only a one-day international, about the right kind of time investment for a group (there are about 8 of us going) that only about 1/2 the people really understand the game! Should be fun. I will try to post photos from that this weekend or early next week. Cheers!

How to find people in Lesotho

So today I set out to find a man who I had heard a lot about. He was a Boy Scout leader in the 1960s and was a very well known man as I had heard from multiple people that I should talk to him when I told them the project I was working on. Unfortunately, and this happens a lot, they didn't know exactly how to get in touch with him. Two people told me to check at the Catholic printing works (where they print the weekly newspaper and books), so when I was up there the other week I did. Again, they couldn't really tell me how to get in touch with him, but they drew me a map of the area where he lived and, like an earlier source, just told me to ask for him at the local high school. So armed with a vague knowledge of where said high school was I set out this morning from Maseru. It ended up being about 35 miles outside town and the road to it was paved (that in itself is impressive). I parked on the school grounds and just wandered towards the school with someone pointing me to the staff room. I walked in and introduced myself and told them who I was looking for. The first teacher I met whipped out her cell phone and gave me him number. Then the principal, a nun, walked in and told me she would find someone to take me up to his place. So five minutes after I arrived I was walking through the fields and then a village to get to this man's house. I show up, introduce myself and he says he would be delighted to talk to me, but he has a meeting to attend today and I should return next week.

Great. Interview set up, only took a bit of guesswork and three people to help me find the place. Then as I am leaving, he asks for my full Sesotho name. I tell him: "Thabiso Masupha" and then he says, "Of course, they have told me a Masupha would be coming to look for me and to speak with me!" The moral of the story: no matter how hard it is to find someone, the 'village telegraph' will beat you to the place where he or she is. He didn't know who I was or what I wanted from him, but someone (probably from the Cathlolic printing works) mentioned that I was looking for him and word got back. Good stuff in a small country! The interview, by the way, should be fantastic. He is a very nimble and spry 75 or 80 year old. I will keep you posted.

Urban hiking

Hello all, hope this post finds you all well. I am doing fine, although we still haven't really had the end of winter rains down here in the lowlands of Lesotho (lowlands being relative as Maseru is still at 5000 feet, but the mountains are much higher). We have been having lots of nice sunny days, but it would be nice to get rain, both for the farmers who need rain to plow and plant and for me as right now the place where I live has a terrible fly infestation that will start to go away with the rains. The photos I have attached are from a hike I did on Saturday. I have been going to the Maseru Hash House Harriers, which is a group that meets every weekend to have a run/hike in a different place. Different people each week set the trail with chalk and you have to try to follow it and they try to confuse you with multiple trails in some places. All in all, a good time and a good way to meet people. Saturday, however, I went out with two friends, John a Brit and Matt a Scotsman (pictures to the left) to a mountain here in the middle of Maseru. We had a good time setting the trail and there were some spectacular views. On one side we looked down on the large textile mills here (the huge buildings with the big blue roofs), on top, it was like a nature preserve. Unfortunately, the top is also used for Basotho initiation/circumcision schools that are a part of the coming of age process. Not all boys go to these schools, but the entire process is very secretive and they are not open to outsiders or even uninitiated Basotho. We tried to ask some people on the way up if there was a school currently underway and got a variety of answers. So we set out and marked the trail, noting at one point what sounded like singing, but didn't encounter any people. So today when the full group met for the hike, we figured we would be okay, but unfortunately, two guys on motor bikes chose this day to drive up the hill as well and this alerted the guys at the school that there might be others around so we were met at the top and firmly told that we had to turn around and cut the hike short. Still, we were able to do almost all of it and it was a fabulous day with great views.

New House

So this week I moved into a new, 'permanent' house that will be my home for the rest of my time here. As you can see from the photographs, it is a very cute little one-bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/study area. It is basically a little guest house in the backyard of an American couple who has lived either here or in Malawi since the late 1970s. They are very nice and have four young children (the oldest is 12 or 13, the youngest still in diapers) so I have lots of screaming and playing going on in the yard outside the entire weekend. It is a good time. I think it will be a very nice place to stay. It is located less than a half mile from the main border post, but is on a quiet side street...the main noises at night even here in the capital are insects and dogs. It is a nice space in which to work, cook, live.
This week was an interesting one work-wise. I got into the archives of the Catholic newspaper and scanned about 75 of their photographs from the 1950s and 60s. It was sort of like a mystery game, however, because while most of the photographs identified one person in the picture, or the group to which a bunch of people belonged, very few had identifying captions telling where or when the photograph was taken (the ones that did were, of course, mainly in Sesotho in very light pencil so I was squinting a lot). So I spent a lot of time looking at clues in the photos to try to get dates and places with them. The paper itself (it is a still-published weekly) is published on Wednesdays and I was there on Thursday so most of the staff was not working very hard and I had constant visitors looking to get more photos for me or willing to take a look and see if they could help with the identifying process. I got the feeling that while a few people might have stopped in before to ask for photos of specific people (big-name politicians and church people most likely), they had never had anyone interested in their entire archive before! I am planning on heading back there this coming week to look at more photos and see if I can track down an old mission journal published in French there (for use by the mission home offices in Quebec for fundraising) to see if they would have more photos and other good stuff. So work continues on in a winding, very-few-days-are-alike manner, but I am enjoying it still. Plus we got a little rain this week so green is starting to appear! Spring is always exciting.

Regional politics

I have been requested to give some thoughts on the political troubles in South Africa (for those who don't know the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) forced out its president about two weeks ago and people within the ANC, which was one of the main anti-apartheid liberation groups, are threatening to split off and form their own party). So, here goes. In my day-to-day life, I really don't hear much talk about this from Basotho, some chatter in the expatriate community here, but most of them watch or listen to too much BBC or CNN anyway! The Lesotho press (yes, there actually is some here and the quality of the English-language weekly newspapers is noticably higher than it is has ever been in my time here with choices for your news) had an interesting editorial page this week with a staff editorial telling South Africa to get its dogs in order because any instability there will hurt the region, and it is the smaller countries that depend on South Africa that will be hurt most, just as the exporting border regions of Mexico feel an American economic downturn faster than small-town and big-city Americans. Right next to that, however, was an analysis piece from a South African journalist arguing (again, correctly I think) that the ANC members who are threatening to form their own party don't have the grass-roots organization behind them to start a new party that will be successful. Despite the split in the ANC leadership, the people are still strongly behind the ANC and many would rather not vote than vote for the mainly ineffective opposition parties. There really is no one in the ANC right now who has the stature to move off, form a splinter party and bring people with him or her (except, of course Nelson Mandela, who at age 90 might just be the most popular ex-politican on the planet and certainly in South Africa...he could win any race he wanted, but he is also extremely frail and has no desire to do anything with politics). So, while the ANC has problems (both in its structures and leadership), it will likely continue to rattle off electoral victories, including next year's general election, without any real serious opposition (I don't know what the various opposition parties have, but it can't be more than about 35-40% of the Parliament combined).
On a very weird note with all this political turmoil (the ruling party here in Lesotho is threatening to split as well ahead of a Party Congress in January to elect new leadership) and the global financial meltdown going on around us, one currency the US Dollar is really strengthening against is the South African rand, so I find my purchasing power growing rapidly. Last week my dollar bought 8.2 rand while today the rate stands at 9.2. Crazy stuff that I don't claim to understand. Hope everyone is well and my political rambling didn't turn you off. I will post some pictures of my new house this weekend and get you back to your regularly scheduled programming!

42 Years of Independence

Well Lesotho celebrated its 42nd birthday yesterday (Saturday). It goes down here a little quieter than the 4th of July. The big national holiday is Moshoeshoe's Day (in honor of the 1st King), which is celebrated in March. For Independence Day, all the schools are out on holiday for a week, so there is more activity than normal, but around here people tend to do their celebrating only at month-end because that is when all the civil servants and textile factory workers (the two main sources of employment outside of subsistence farming) get paid. There is a big arts and cultural festival at a cute town to the south of Maseru and since the Ministry of Tourism and Culture (who runs the archives) is a big sponsor they closed down on Friday. So I decided (with a couple of other Americans here) to stay up and watch the Vice-Presidential debate on the satellite television. Besides, when else in life will I have the chance (or half the desire) to stay up for a debate that starts at 3AM???
So that was my 'American time' for the week. Otherwise, I had a good week research-wise. I stopped in at the Catholic newspaper offices and they said I could take a look at and make copies of their photographic collections from the 1950s and 60s (very exciting). So I told them I would come back next week when I found a scanner so I will be heading over there sometime this week. I also have an interview set up with a guy who currently teaches at the Teacher Training College who was heavily involved in youth organizations in the 1960s for this week, so I am starting to move beyond the archive, which is good. I have plenty of work to do there, but that stuff isn't going anywhere and the most interesting part of my work will come from interviews and photographs I can find, so it is good to have some of that going on alongside my other work.
What else? Spring is finally in the air here. We still haven't had the end-of-winter rains yet which means people can't really plow and plant (so people are starting to get nervous...they usually come sometime in September), but the last two days have been overcast (itself a rarity) and humid, so hopefully the rain isn't far behind. It will be nice to have all the fields and plants explode in green as well...the brown, dead grass of winter is getting a bit old. That's the news from here for now. Take care.