Edyn's African Adventure

On Sunday, the day dawned bright and sunny and I finally got on the tour into Lesotho. Lesotho is the tiny country that is geographically surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho is the little red dot on the map below.


The majority of households survive on farming or migrant labor--many of them miners who live in South Africa most of the year and send money back. The country over 80% rural, though very very different from south western Ontario rural, lol. Being Summer now, it is very very green and lush. Corn, or more correctly, mielies, grows seemingly everywhere.

We went into the Northern part and it is very very rugged. It is a very mountainous region, and it is the only independent state in the world that lies entirely above 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) in elevation. Its lowest point is 1,400 metres (4,593 ft), and over 80% of the country lies above 1,800 metres (5,900 ft). Being so high, it is also very very cold in the winter, including snow. Back in the day, the Queen (of England) gave blankets to the country, and wearing these blankets has become tradtion, even in the heat of summer...it was odd to us...it is very hot there yet no one had shorts or short sleeves on...and many of the people had sweaters on. In the picture below, both men are wearing hats, the man on the left has a jacket over his shoulders, and the man on the right has the blanket wrapped around him. Seriously, it was probably 27 C or 85 F that day.


The roads are mostly dirt roads and are strewn with large rocks. There are almost 6000 kilometres of unpaved dirt roads. Going is very very slow and rough. We didn't see very many other motor vehicles and many people ride horses. This man also is wearing a knit hat and blanket.


Our first stop was a school. There are three buildings there--two schools and one cookhouse. One of the buildings was the first community school, built in 1976. There are other gov't schools but they are more than 2 hour walk one way. The second of the three buildings is a new school that is being paid for by the Irish. There are three classes in the one building, and four in the other, all going on simultaneously, with no walls or barriers or the like.



The second activity was a walk up the mountain to have lunch and to see the cave paintings. It was a bit arduous as it was hot and with the elevation, but absolutely beautiful.

Lesotho does not have any protection laws for the cave/wall drawings so they are fading due to weather and some have been scratched off by children who don't know the historical, cultural value of them. Here, the guide, Zim, is pointing out a painting, and there is a closeup of one.

From there, we went to see a sangoma. Sangomas are the traditional healers in many tribes in southern Africa. They perform a holistic and symbolic form of healing, embedded in the beliefs of their culture that ancestors in the afterlife guide and protect the living. Sangomas are called to heal (using herbs primarily), and through them ancestors from the spirit world can give instruction and advice to heal illness, social disharmony and spiritual difficulties. Sangomas have many different social and political roles in the community: herbal healing, divination, rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, and narrating the history, cosmology, and myths of their tradition. They are highly revered and respected in their society, where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution (contact with impure objects or occurrences) or by the ancestors themselves, either malevolently, or through neglect if they are not respected, or to show an individual her calling to be a Sangoma.

It was a very very enlightening trip. It only scratched the surface, but it was very neat to see first hand close up how other people in other social circumstances, cultures and economic realities live.

One of our guides was a teacher at the school and the community children flocked to our group. They were very comfortable with us and were great about having their pictures taken. And they knew what to expect...groups from our BackPacker's lodge come by regularly, mostly with those folks you tend find in these kinds of things...young students or health care workers or other travelers and such, from the US, Germany, England, Australia and Canada among other places. They followed us on the hike and shared our lunch.


Fantastic trip. I learned a lot, and am really glad I was able to finally get there.