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| Malealea in Lesotho - Mrisi and Giya (far right of picture) on a walk to see rock paintings, 2002 |
Venda Sun 5
2-3 January 2002
Plane. 9084 km to J’burg (5644 miles). Lights in the sea below us. Non stop tv. Giya watches Princess 3 times. I watch
Planet of the Apes but miss the end. Dehydrated, drink endless bottles of water
but hardly go to the loo. Feel hot and bloated, dry, fingers like sausages.
Johannesburg airport – warm, not too hot but it’s still early. Pick up
the car. Get lost. Risenga and I have first row. He’s panicking, revving the
engine, refusing to stop at traffic lights. We drive through suburbs from
airport after leaving the motorway at the wrong junction. End up in the city
centre. It seems smaller, more run down. Risenga gets lost again, takes the
only road he knows out, towards Soweto. Our first stop after landing is Dieplof,
the shanties and shacks by the sides of the road. Mrisi can’t believe what he’s
seeing. C's house, the guy R lived with. Lots of children and young girls.
Wife smells of booze. Forget New Year’s so close.
It was eight years before we could raise the money to visit again when Mrisi was coming to the end of primary school. In my mind now, there's a lost trip with its associated diary and photo albums, a diary straddling the nursery and earliest years. I know why there isn't that trip, it was the cost. Probably, Risenga visited alone. So for Mrisi and Giya this trip in 2002 was effectively their first. It was the one that delivered impressions of the country their father came from, impressions that they don't remember fully now, but live in the subconscious.
What I remember, apart from the tense drive out of the airport when we arrived, was the long discussions with Mrisi and Giya's primary school to persuade the head of the value of taking them out of school for a month. We wanted to visit Lesotho and that would have been impossible during our summer - their winter. We didn't know at the time how that trip to Lesotho would continue to lay down stepping stones in all our lives. Of course we didn't.
The school was difficult but persuadable if we took some work with us for them to do and agreed they'd each do a diary and scrapbook to share with teachers. There were battles over the diaries. I remember us sitting in a camp in the Kruger National Park arguing about those diaries. What little there is in them is now priceless, of course, but the teachers never looked at them or asked the children to do a presentation to the class about their trips. I couldn't understand why.
Margaret’s waiting for us with the children, Mpho, Nkinsani, Nkateko and
cousin Rhulani. Their house is neat, a perfect lawn, vine with grapes, peach
trees. Bars on every window. I fall asleep in the sun exhausted, wake up baking
hot. Hot all day, hot at night.
So much to fit in and looking back on that trip I wonder why we left Margaret's so early. Margaret and Joe - Risenga's brother and his sister in law, still live in Palm Springs, not far from Risenga's mother. Since I didn't speak any South African languages, I let Risenga make the arrangements with them, with his mother, with his cousin in Limpopo. Of course I should have taken the initiative. My diaries show how many rows came out of misunderstandings, arrangements, time and tradition. But in this diary of our second trip it seems we landed, slept and were off again.
Vereeniging to change money – long
drive. Hassled at the parking place by someone wanting to wash the car, R
agrees. Wimpey for lunch. The town is flat, lots of 30s style buidings, a
shopping centre, market, drab. Drive back to R’s mother's. Lots of sitting
around. Mercy, R’s cousin’s daughter wants to be a journalist, she asks me about
it. Up the next morning, Saturday at 5 am and it’s already
warm. We leave by 7 to drive towards Bloemfontain where we shop, shown to the
shopping centre by cops, friendly this time. We buy stuff for Lesotho. Drive
east to Maseru, start seeing mountains. It’s flat and wild, nothing but barren
fields. Reach the border, it’s like nothing else, a bizarre toll and office
where our passports are stamped. There’s reggae playing in a car, hats on sale
and souvenirs. Maseru is run down, B tells us to wait for him at the
Victoria hotel where 4 boys fight to wash the car. It freaks us all out,
including R who’s become paranoid aobut security. There’s worse to come. We
hang around for two hours waiting for B and another hour while he
does his shopping. Leaving Maseru, B’s driving fast - it’s
like the wild west. Taxis everywhere, run down lorries, shacks on both sides of
the road, like a frontier town.
Argument about driving. At one point the
road seems like a race track and R has the bug for driving fast. He wants to
keep up, B’s being macho. No consideration that kids are in the car. Road signs painted on tin shacks and shops,
every day low prices, vastly ancient adverts for Omo.
We’re staying in B’s flat at Roma University. It’s in a beautiful spot, with mountains behind, a great feel to
it. But yet again a long wait for the barbeque and mosquitoes are biting by the
time food is ready. Then a group of girls turn up and I’m ready for bed.
They’re students. It’s okay, good for a cold bath and to clean up before we go
to Malealea but we didn’t actually need to stop off there at all and it
was a long way out of our way.
This diary was written in a sitting, by the looks of things, catching up on a week's worth. The trip was a catching up, too, but what were we thinking, turning up to see family and leaving straightaway? It was always a balance. On one hand the enormous cost of air fares and car hire, of places to stay - everything multiplied by four, on the other hand the family. When we thought about these trips, we wanted to see the country as well as family. I couldn't imagine going all that way, saving for years, and staying in one place. Family was important. A sense of the country's culture, ecology, history, richness, geography was also important.
As for Lesotho - that was the bizarre legacy of the men walking with mountains in the distance. But Lesotho was the first wild place I'd ever been and I'd go back tomorrow to do the week-long trek we couldn't do then.
The next day, Sunday, we want to leave
early but of course don’t get going till 11 and then have to go into Maseru for
fuel and to a friend of B’s house to pick her up. Then it’s off and as we drive
out of Maseru again the road’s more and more isolated, the hills higher and
higher. There are children by the sides of the road, cows, sheep. Mrisi and
TJ, a Lesotho diplomat’s son who’s been in Eastbourne at school for the last 2
years, joke about and take pictures of the mountains. As we get closer the
road’s rougher, lot of potholes. The place is barren, it seems incredible
anyone can live here, small fields of maize and nothing else. Then a village
with shop and café – plastic bags waving on long poles at a house indicating
they are selling something. We reach the Gates of Paradise pass – over the hill
the wind’s blowing - and at the top stop for a view of a fantastic mountain
range. As good as Snowdonia seen from Anglesey, a massive valley in between.
We creep down, it’s a dirt road by now
with potholes and giant ruts, we see signs for Malealea, it seems like forever
before we get there, then it’s in front of us, a wire fence and gate, 10 – 15
ponies, lots of small boys and men. We’re shown into the lodge and climb out
shell shocked, bumped into a stunned trance by the driving and the road. It’s
like another world after Maseru and Palm Springs. We’re staying in round houses
– two of them. The children immediately claim one for themselves, delighted at
the space and independence. There’s a lawn and willow tree, peacocks, pea hens
and chicks, a view of the mountains. It’s hot, we collapse on the beds once B and company leave. B’s sceptical about the place and recommends others. R and I are both annoyed by his attitude but R says B doesn’t like tourists.
He’s an academic.
The walls are dark green, the roofs are
grass, there are towels and hot showers. We can cook and there’s flowers
everywhere, a bar. The houses are beautifully decorated with stones. We sleep
well. Giya in with me after all. It’s so dark and it rains during the night.
In the morning it’s overcast and raining still. We decide to do a walk to the
bushman paintings with a guide, Mohelo, who’s studying law in Bloemfontain.
It’s a gentle trek downhill through a village where Giya goes to the loo, the
children come out to see us. It’s a steep climb later on as we go into the
gorge, past a cave where we eat lunch.
Monday 7 Jan
By the time we come back, the cave is
full of sheep sheltering from the rain but as we go down it’s sunshine and hot.
The first painting’s astonishing, above a sheer drop, almost, into the gorge.
It reminds me of paintings in Lascaux in France, black and red dots, hunting
figures, and one huge animal in the middle. Three lots of paintings, some very faded, some white figures, some dark, some with hats on, feathers maybe on
their heads. We shelter here on the way back when the thunder starts and
hailstones. The river (Ribaneng) disappears. The underground tunnel
further on is full of water.
A trickle of stream has become a gush –
we watch it burst over the rocks we crossed, changing from white water to
orange. We have to pass the children over. Mohelo carries Giya on his back. It’s
hairy. Walking back we’re soaked again – soaked and dry about three times.
There are crystals poking out of the earth and quartz. Mrisi’s beside himself
when we find a cluster of crystal. R too finds a beautiful one.
The night is clear. We sit by a fire in
the bar and a guy from Manchester shows Giya the southern cross. We are sitting
below Orion’s belt. Two satellites pass overhead, we watch them come together
and part.
The band plays on the first night. First
we hear singing and go to look. It is the Basotho children’s choir, although
most of them look like teenagers. Their voices are incredible, harmonizing
fantastically. Then the band comes on. A group of six musicians and two
dancers, playing home-made instruments out of oil cans. Two guitars, an
instrument like a berimbau but made with a large tin can and played with a
bow. Also a drum covered with rubber and played with sticks made of bits of old
tyre.
The sky is what I’d hoped. But there’s
still electric light and it goes out too late for me to sit and look up.
I fall asleep on Mrisi’s bed while R’s at the bar talking with G, the guy
who works in the office. The night’s so clear, the sunset promises a good day
and it is. Later I look up by the
fire, shield my eyes from the light of the flames, suddenly the sky’s milky
again, so many stars, so many that I haven’t seen.
The woman from Manchester’s telling me
about the tour she’s on with a guide and the time they spent in the Karroo.
There's a massive group of Dutch people but it’s all a bit like a Greek taverna.
Malealea is isolated but nothing compared to what we were about to experience, although it is the place I think of when I remember Lesotho's poverty - bare feet, oversized adult clothes on thin children, plastic bags rolled up, layer by layer to make a football, everyone walking, clothes, towels, underwear thin from being scrubbed.
I hadn't anticipated that a lesson in poverty would be one of the most enduring, from this and subsequent trips. That in so many discussions around our kitchen table in Brighton, Mrisi and Giya would voluntarily acknowledge their privilege. That when I ever dare to suggest I am poor (in UK terms), I have to pull myself back from that misconception. And it is no coincidence, I think, that after this trip we were all more immune to the power of consumer advertising.
This poverty is intensified by HIV/Aids - according to the UN Development programme, the virus affects 23% of the adult population. Like in South Africa, this means grandparents take responsibility for supporting young children since the virus has killed so many parents, who might have been wage earners, at least economically active in some way. On top of that, families have to find the money for funerals.
People used to migrate to South Africa to work but these jobs have declined. People cultivate small areas of land to grow food, but the soil's exhausted and eroded and HIV/Aids is also robbing communities of knowledge and leaving the weakest - the young and old - with the heavy load self-sufficiency delivers.
But Paseka, drummer with Sotho Sounds, is one of the younger generation of kitchen gardeners keeping the knowledge alive. When he visited in 2013 to play at Edinburgh, we talked a lot about growing vegetables, we spent time on the allotment, he earthed up the potatoes that survived the winter and which I dug up last week. We wondered why raspberries don't grow in Lesotho. He told me that the birds are so hungry they eat the blackberries as soon as they ripen. I crushed mint, sage and lemon verbena to see if he grew them. I have no idea why this seemingly tangential thought makes me optimistic. But he'd worked out his own way of irrigating his land, drawing me a diagram of the walls and channels he created. And because at the end of the summer, Wyevale Garden Centres discount seeds by 50%, he was able to take a few back and I'm hoping for a report on some experimental crops when Sotho Sounds return to the UK this summer.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/99268/pregnant-positive-and-on-hiv-treatment-for-life
http://www.undp.org.ls/hivaids/default.php
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13728324