sedativegunk

I’ve been a little negligent on sending updates, mostly because I have been on the move a lot lately since I left Maseru.  Today is my last full day in Jo’burg before returning home.  The past week has flown by so quickly yet it seems I am a world away from Lesotho where I spent the previous 3 weeks.

July 28 was our final day of the Habitat build.  We broke for lunch at 12:30 and then had a celebration with the villagers.  It was a very emotional moment knowing that nearly 3 weeks of working closely with them and their children would be coming to an end. The children sang songs to us and the villagers gave us each a traditional Lesotho broom, a significant gesture in Lesotho culture that represents a village’s acceptance of an outsider into their community.  What was really hard was that many of the younger kids didn’t really understand that we wouldn’t be coming back.

Since arriving in Africa, I wondered what impact we Habitat volunteers might have on the local people.  It was obvious we would learn a lot from our experience, but would they learn anything from us?  Being surrounded by such warm friendly people with their contagious happiness and  warm smiles in the face of poverty has made me somewhat despondent by what I see at home in Canada – unfriendly, selfish people who have no idea what real problems are.

I would get some insight the next morning when a number of the local Habitat organizers met with us as we were leaving Maseru.  They all were extremely grateful for our work and hoped that our paths would cross again some day.  One woman asked us to remember them as we returned to our regular lives.  She said that we would never be forgotten and then proceeded to tell us a story of a meeting she had just attended a couple of days before with residents of the village we had been working at.  Apparently one of the men of the town stood up at the meeting and said that the presence of the white foreigners in the village had taught him a valuable lesson about parents and their children.  He challenged the other fathers in the room to show as much interest and affection for the children of the community as the “white people” did. He said the men work too hard and tend to shun their children away too quickly rather than take time out to play with them, carry them around on their shoulders and ask them about school, as we foreigners had done. Whatever we Habitat volunteers accomplished over the 3 weeks we were there, I believe this little story provided me more personal satisfaction as a human being than the total number of foundations we had dug and the cement blocks we made over the previous three weeks.  I knew that I had been somehow changed by my experience in Lesotho and that I would never forget my time there, but now I realized that people in the village felt the same way.  I was relieved to see that we, too, had something very positive to share with them.

The final weekend of my time in Lesotho was spent with the other volunteers in the spectacular southern part of the country.  We left on the Friday for Malealea Lodge for a 2-day trek in the mountains.  The drive to Malealea brought us through some of the more fertile parts of the country, a welcomed relief from the barren dusty plains of the Maseru area (I think I’m still coughing up dust from my time there).  While winter has brought a certain dormant look to the landscape, the golden fields of scrub from last summer’s crops against the blue mountains was still a beautiful site.  Much of the soil in the area is a deep red, reminding me of Prince Edward Island.

The lodge was the starting point of the first of 2 7-hour pony treks through the mountains.  Our objective was to reach a traditional Basotho village
high in the mountains to spend the night.  The following day we would return by a different route.

The scenery was breath taking.  Throughout the trip I kept thinking how unreal it was to be here…on a horse…in Africa…so far from anything that would resemble home.  The villages we passed through have not likely changed in 100 years or more.  The villagers all would come out to wave and smile at us. Some of the children would ask us for sweets.

We spent the night in one of these traditional villages, with a handful of huts and more livestock roaming around than people.  The lack of electricity or other amenities did not at all dampen our spirits.

As darkness was falling quickly in the valley surrounded by high mountains we prepared and ate dinner fast and prepared for a night of wallowing in the unspoiled starlight.  Just before dark we noticed a number of local men digging up on the hill.  I went to chat with them but was not able to get much information on what they were doing.  I thought maybe they were digging a foundation for a house, something I felt I knew a lot about from my previous 3 weeks, and could lend a hand.  I found out later that they were actually digging a grave for one of the locals.

We spent the evening with the local children who were curious about us foreigners.  They really got a kick out of the headlamps that a few of us were wearing. They would blow at them thinking they were candles! They sang songs to us and we sang to them.  One of my favourites was when the group of us sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.  I got all the kids singing the bass line “a weem-a wed, a weem-a wed” which is repeated throughout the song on 2 different tones.  Two of the girls from our team sang the lyrics.  I think we managed to belt out about 3 parts of the 5 part harmony of the song.  The kids loved it.  While I have never had any strong feelings about the song before, there was a certain magic to it in the silence of the
African wilderness.  It took many days for the echo of that song to leave my head.

Early in the morning, I was the first of our group to awake.  We were all sleeping in the same straw-roofed hut.  There was only a slight bit of light coming through the 3 small windows of the hut.  I first heard the breeze blowing, the ruckus of the roosters around the village and the cows outside the hut.  But then I heard the chanting of voices.  Women and men were singing in the rich harmonies that people in this part of the world have cleverly mastered and which seem to come so easily.  For 15 or 20 minutes or so, I lay listening to the beautiful sounds of these voices, like a choir singing in the greatest of Europe’s cathedrals…but without the cathedral.  If only I could have an alarm clock like this every morning!  I found out later that it was the funeral ceremony for the individual whose grave was being dug the previous evening.

We returned to the lodge following some pretty steep paths and along some 500-ft drops.  I had a lot of faith in my little horse though and he didn’t

let me down.  By now I had nicknamed the poor bastard “Lucky” because it seemed every time we’d go up a hill, she seemed to be lucky to make it alive.  On a couple of hills I swear she was panting and her tongue was nearly touching the ground.

We got back to the lodge to have an nice night of good food better amenities than we had had in Maseru.  One could even drink the tap water there.  It was strange to be back in a place where there were other white people.  In Maseru we had become accustomed to being nearly the only white people in the city.  I found this strangely normal after awhile.  But I suddenly became uncomfortable around other white people, all of whom were from South Africa.  I realized how different white people interact with each other.  Compared with the openness of the Lesotho culture where outsiders are always welcome, white people seem to act as though they are part of an exclusive club where you need a secret password to belong.  The group of us managed to stay up past midnight, a novelty considering that most nights we were in bed by 9 or 10.

The next morning I bolted out of bed to enjoy an incredible sunrise over what seemed an unreal mural of blue mountains.  It provided much inspiration for me to scrawl in my journal for a few moments and collect my blurry thoughts after a night of indulgence.  This was my last full day in Lesotho.  The next day we would fly to Johannesburg.

The next day was another sad one.  Most of our group did not know each other before the build.  We spent 3 intense weeks together and now we would be going our seperate ways.  We all flew to Jo’burg together, but from there most would continue on home while some of us would remain in South Africa a little longer.

I spent 3 incredible days in Kruger National Park, probably the most famous safari parks in the world. As luck would have it, 3 other volunteers were headed there at the same time so we were able to pool our resources and rent a car. Three days of gazing at giraffes, lions, elephants and other animals would be a nice change, as I was still processing  what I had experienced in Lesotho.

I think the highlight was on our second day driving through the park.  We spotted 2 elephants following a trail towards the road.  We decided to back the car up so that we would be behind the crossing where the elephants were headed.  That way we wouldn’t be in their way and we’d get some cool pix.  I guess we misjudged our location, because the elephants were rather surprised when the emerged from behind the bushes to see a little white car on the road.  One of them raised his head to give us full view of his giant tusks.  The two bulls ambled slowly across the road, and gave us a good hard stare prompting my friend Jo to slowly back up the car.  The four of us realized that we were a little too close for comfort. Fortunately, the elephants came to the conclusion that the little white thing with wheels with people hanging out of it snapping pictures of them was not a threat, so they trundled down the embankment on the other side of the road and left us alone.

The next morning we did a sunrise walk which brought us within 500m of a couple of lions.  Too far for pictures, but it was a cool experience nonetheless.

I’m now in Jo’burg with Erika.  We arrived on Friday and have had a great time here.  I will provide you an account in my last update, which I will most likely send from home.  How sad, tomorrow I leave South Africa.  I can’t believe a month has passed so quickly.  Thanks to all of you who read my rantings and responded!