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Published: February 12th 2023
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We are the only car passing through the border. It's ten-thirty and the log says we're the third vehicle through since they opened at eight. The Caledonspoort border crossing into Lesotho is very quiet and very laid back.
For about an hour we'd been approaching Lesotho's mountains along a potholed South African road. Once across the border, the road quality doesn't really change but the scenery does. Gone are the endless vista of the African velt; we're into misty mountains, lush green valleys and roaring mountain rivers. There are small farms everywhere; a few huts, a few animals and some maize.
We are staying at Maliba Lodge, deep in the Ts'ehlanyane National Park. The road to the lodge climbs and climbs, eventually turning to gravel and getting us to over 2000 metres high. At the lodge we are staying in our own large thatched hut with an uninterrupted view up the misty valley. We go to the lodge to eat and, while we are out, someone lights our hut's wood-burning stove. We return to a roaring blaze … in a thatched hut! It's a little worrying.
We sleep well in 'the kingdom
in the sky'. It is cooler and clouds swirl around the 3100m mountains that surround us, sometimes bringing heavy rain showers that wash the deep red sandstone soil into the rivers. Lesotho uses the plentiful water as an asset, selling hydro-electricity and water to neighbouring South Africa.
There is good walking in the valleys, although crossing swollen streams is tricky. We see lots of small birds and a huge Verreaux's eagle. We also find eland, large antelope, wandering on the steep slopes and disturb a troop of monkeys who were eating peaches; they ran off into the trees with grumpy screams. There are many wild peach trees but the fruits are small and pale.
We ask if we can wander around a village. The first family we meet have a donkey - for transport, two cows - for milk and for their calves to sell, a pig, some chickens and a small vegetable patch. Across the road they grow maize and sorghum; maize is used to make pap, a sort of mashed grain that is their staple carb. All pretty self sufficient for the three generation family and even more so when we discover
they brew their own beer! This is maize beer that uses germinated sorghum as the provider of yeasts. It looks like watered-down milk, tastes somewhere between beer and scrumpy and has the kick of a mule.
We also find a woman in the village who is a third-generation healer. She looks quite ordinary but her healing hut is full of weird jars and cans; hanging from the rafters are bits of animals and birds and branches of herbal shrubs. Patients pay for her to heal them but don't tell her their problem. Instead she puts on her headdress of porcupine quills, shakes some powdered tobacco from a cow's horn onto the mat and throws her 'bones'; the way these fall shows her the treatment that you need. Her 'bones' are actually cow's and goat's knee bones and shin bones, three cow's hooves, three cowrie shells, a child's bracelet and two domino's (5:2 and double-6, in case it matters). We are told that people come here from far and wide, even from South Africa, to be healed.
Our final stop is in the school. From five, children are taught to read and write in both
Sotho, the official Lesotho language, and English. In the first grade the days alternate, today was a Sotho day but tomorrow they will be taught in English. The children, and their teacher, seem totally unphased by this dual-languge approach. The children are very well behaved and sing to us to say goodbye. In the more senior class, a mix of 8 to 12 year-olds, they are learning maths, taught in English, and next is a science lesson about farming, taught in Sotho; yesterday's science lesson was about microscopes, in English.
It would be hard to feel further from the war in Ukraine than the mountains of Lesotho but, even here, it has made life harder. Many rural families have no electricity and rely on paraffin for lighting and heating and the price of paraffin has doubled due to the war. These are people who live by subsistence farming, they have no ability to earn more money, so lampis go out earlier, heaters get turned off.
We've had a great three weeks in Eswatini, South Africa and Lesotho. We've see so much wildlife, met so many interesting people and walked in stunning landscapes. The driving
has been easy - it's surprising how quickly you get used to spotting potholes - and the food has been great - steak in SA, trout in Lesotho, candlelight in Eswatini.
Homeward bound, it takes about an hour to gently drive down the valley to the main road. We meet villagers, many wrapped in their traditional blankets, as they walk, or ride a donkey or horse, up the small road. Some are leading animals - a couple of sheep, a goat or a cow. We meet just one other car in the hour's drive. We're very aware that we have been staying in a different world.
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