Basotho

1st February 2018

In Lesotho, the Basotho people speak Sesotho. One person of Basotho origin is Masotho as in he is Masotho. The -sotho bit of all of them is pronounced soo-too. Every person I have met here has been friendly, with the possible exception of the public taxi drivers all of whom seem to have death wishes, and today just confirmed that.

The only meeting I had planned today was in the afternoon so I decided, after writing up some notes and doing a bit of planning, to go for a walk and take some video of the local area. Everyone I walked past said hello, either in English or Sesotho, and a few stopped to engage me in conversation. Apparently, it is considered very rude not to acknowledge someone as you walk past them and this evidently applies in the suburbs as it does elsewhere. Many will ask how you are and others will ask what you are doing, in a friendly interested way. I was making a point of not pointing my camera at individual people but a couple of people actually asked me to take their picture and send it to them either by WhatsApp or Facebook.

Many of the busy roads are lined by small shacks selling anything from fruit and veg to mobile phone top-ups. At lunch time, the air is scented with the smell of cooking on roadside braai (BBQs). One woman I spoke to told me about the challenges of running her roadside “hut”. She ran it with her mother and their customers were from the nearby warehouses. They seem to be an enterprising lot and there is often a congregation of people selling food and other merchandise by the side of the road at each of the many speed bumps that cover the roads.

This afternoon I journeyed once again to the Ministry of Health and we discussed a date for some possible training at Mohlomi as well as some suggestions of where I might head outside of Maseru to look at the implementation of mhGap so far. I think the plan for the end of next week is to journey to Thaba Tseke which is high up in the mountains, over 2500m, and I have been warned that the altitude can take some getting used to.

After the meeting I had arranged to meet David at the Ouh La La cafe nearby so I walked in that direction. On my way, I passed a full sized model of a spitfire which made me look twice. On further investigation, it seems that the Kingdom of Lesotho generously gave the RAF twenty spitfires during the second world war and No.72 squadron was named Basutoland in recognition of their generosity. Lesotho was once a British protectorate so the link is not as strange as it might seem at first.

The Ouh La La is situated at a major crossroads in Maseru so sitting outside in the sunshine you have a choice of looking at the cosmopolitan clientele or watching the traffic and trying to work out the rules of the road here. The traffic lights certainly only seem to be regarded as a guide but they did all stop when the king drove through from his nearby palace.