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Wil, 6 July 2010
Lesotho , Maseru 16°

Playing tourist and working in the local slammer

Saturday, 19 June

“Oh God, oh Jesus, oh shit, oh you mother fucker”, Mel and I are on our way to Semongkong in the Thaba-Putsoa range and the last 65-km stretch consists of a narrow dirt road full of deep ruts and potholes and sharp rock points sticking out, winding through hairpin bends steeply up the mountain. We are in the project Toyota and that is ridiculously low on its wheels for these conditions, so we can feel the sharp rock points scraping and hitting the bottom with ominous screeching and slamming sounds every so often as we jolt along. Sometimes the ruts are so deep that we have to get out and look how to negotiate them best.

The view is stunning, especially now that the sun is setting, but Mel has no eyes for it, he is sweating bricks, not only because he expects to take us over the edge any minute, but also at the thought of having to explain to his colleagues that he wrecked the car. I am glad to have had the foresight to wear my sling as the car jolts and bucks like an unruly horse. For the rest I am not all that worried. I have more confidence in Mel’s driving skills than Mel himself.

According to the brochure from the tourist office and the information from the Semonkong Lodge the trip from Ladybrand to Semonkong takes 3 hours on a road that can easily be travelled by a luxury car. And so we left Maseru , from where it would, in accordance with our logic take only 2.5 hours, too late as Mel had insisted on his weekend ly-in, and then when we were ready to leave his boss wanted the car to be taken to a meeting. In the end, it was past 1.30 before we finally hit the road. We have been travelling for 4 hours, the light is fading and there seems to be no end to this road. Within the next 2 hours it will be total blackout! Between the streams of expletives, Mel comes up with all sorts of contingency plans, should we get stuck on this road when it gets totally dark. In the end he decides that we will stop at the very next village and request sanctuary.

And then, when even I start to get worried that we might not make it before dark, we are shocked back into the here and now by a loud horn blast. There is a bus behind us that wants to overtake us. Instead of making space, Mel gets out to talk with the driver, who assures him that even in a little car like ours we will make it to Semonkong within the next hour, if only we make way for him now, so that he can pass. Most of the passengers are gratefully making use of this unscheduled stop and all over the road groups of men are holding pissing contests.

As soon as Mel has manoeuvred aside, the bus rumbles past us at full speed and disappears in the distance within minutes in a cloud of dust. Yet the knowledge of this bus being on the road is strangely comforting. There are others travelling this mountain. There is life on the road.

Eventually, we drive up the bridge over a gorgeous river into Semonkong just as the last light disappears. But then we are rescued by the occasional street lantern, alleviating the worst of the darkness. At the bus stop we pick up 2 American girls who have come to South Africa for the world cup and are touring the country, Lesotho and Swaziland between matches. They are spending the night in the same lodge where we have booked accommodation.

Mel’s nerves are in tatters, and we are happy to have the girls with us, who help us navigate the last major obstacles: 2 deep pools across the road whose depth we cannot fathom in the darkness. While the girls and i walk ahead, showing that the pools are not terribly deep, a ‘bakky’ overtakes us and takes the pools at full speed. Its gets its wheelbase barely wet. Set at ease Mel goes through to and then it is another gruelling half hour in the pitch dark over another bad road. It is around 7.30 when we check into the lodge at last and walk to our rondavel under a splendid starlit sky.

Although the lodge is full of football fans, nobody can tell me how the match Netherlands-Japan has ended, but everybody is full of praise about the British princes we have just missed. They both run charity projects in the area and they have combined their enthusiasm for football with a visit to their projects, and they have spent the past couple of days in the lodge with their entourage. Apparently, the princes have been charming, courteous and friendly all week as opposed to the British press, who behaved intrusive, boorish and rude. “It is incredible what those kids have to go through 24 hours a day, every day”, the manager says indignantly, “I have such respect for them!”

Semonkong is about a 1000 m higher than Maseru and it is bitterly cold at night, but with 3 woollen blankets, a duvet and an electric heater we keep going all night, the sleeping arrangements are quite comfy. Nevertheless, Mel doesn’t get much sleep as he is worried sick about the return journey. He has worked out a scenario of hiring somebody experienced in driving these roads to drive us back to Maseru, but the manager is unimpressed: “cars much smaller than yours make it up here and back and nothing ever goes wrong. You will see that the road is much easier to navigate going down. Besides, you will have full daylight.”

Sunday, 20 June

Semonkong’s biggest attraction is the Maletsunyane Falls, one of the highest in Africa with its 192 m, part of which is frozen this time of the year, but Mel cannot be moved into taking time out to go and see the falls. He is too nervous about getting home. I do understand his worries. Besides, I have seen falls before, haven’t I? So, by 9 we were on the road again. The views on the road back are equally stunning in the bright sunshine, and indeed much easier than coming up, so we make regular photo stops to capture the beauty of frozen streams and mountain tops bathing in sunlight. Even so, we reach Roma, from where we have a paved road all the way to Maseru before 12.

Roma is Lesotho’s university town, so we decide to have lunch there and have a look around the university. It excels our expectations. The buildings look attractive, set in well-maintained gardens. Even the classrooms look functional and well maintained. Hhhmm, perhaps we should both consider taking jobs as lecturers in Roma!

We are back in Maseru by 2, just in time for the music festival in the Alliance Française, so that’s where we head. Good band, good music. The singer starts on the Click Song, my favourite Miriam Makeeba song, as we sit down. And she can sing! This was a great weekend all round. Mel is worn out, but when I suggest going back to Semonkong by bus, he grins broadly and claims that he now knows how to negotiate roads like that and so we can take the car again next time. In the evening I hear him brag to Jonas about our experience. The adventure has grown to epic proportions!

America lost from Ghana on Saturday and England was thrashed by Germany today. Exciting games both, and Netherlands-Cameroon wasn’t bad either. We are both more drawn in by the world-cup excitements than we had ever thought possible when it started. Only the vuvuzelas drive us crazy. The noise seems to go 24 hours a day, although the enthusiasm is waning a bit now that South Africa is out of the games.

Sunday, 27 June

Lots of things have happened these last few weeks, but typing with one (left) hand is difficult and so blogging about it had to wait until I had become more mobile again. I had a shoulder operation in Bloemfontein on 1 June, and the healing process is rather slower than I had anticipated. I am now using both my hands again, but I really have to watch myself as the price of overdoing things is rather more pain than I had bargained for.

That operation had been overdue for years, but I had never been able to schedule it while in the Netherlands as I was never home long enough. Besides, as long as we stayed in the heat of the tropics, it wasn’t so bad as long as I didn’t go swimming. But as it grew colder in Lesotho, the shoulder got more and more painful and unwieldy until I felt forced to make up my mind and inquire about the possibilities of having it sorted out in South Africa.

An email to one of the highly-respected hospitals in Bloemfontein yielded the email addresses of 5 orthopaedic surgeons. One of them replied to my email right away, saying that he specialised in shoulders and could see me the same week. My appointment was for Thursday 27 May and we decided to make an outing of it. Angela came along for the ride.

We were on our way by 8.30 thinking that we would sail across the border in minutes, however, in that week of all weeks South Africa had decided to tighten security measures on all the borders with Lesotho and since then every, but every passport has had to be scanned and stamped in and out of the country. The consequence is enormous queues especially at the Ladybrand border post. And we got caught right in the middle of it. I must admit to being thrilled me to bits to see even the American Ambassador queuing up behind us ...

Bloemfontein, or Bloem as insiders call it, is a modern rather sterile town where most of the historical buildings have had to make way for enormous malls. It takes a while to find some sort of town heart, as we had discovered during a previous weekend in go-getting Bloem. This time we were better prepared and we made our way to one of the excellent museums: The Women and Children War Memorial.

This museum deals with the Boer Wars and the concentration camps the British erected all over South Africa to intern Afrikaander and black women and children, with disastrous consequences. The museum is remarkably even-handed giving both the Afrikaander and the British point of view and showing extensively the misery that has been visited on the black population.

While Angela and Mel booked into the hotel, right across the hospital, I leisurely walked to my appointment. The orthopaedic surgeon looked at my x-rays, made a scan and spoke: “You are right, this needs repairing. I can do you Tuesday.” Ooops that was very fast. It didn’t even allow me the time to think it over and decide against it again. Booking the bed took more time than going to x-ray and seeing the doctor.

And then it was party time in happening Bloem! Ehhhhh no, Bloem is boring as hell. I sincerely hope the local hospitality industry has done its best to get some activity going for the football hordes that have descended on the city by now and for which they have tripled all the prices.

On our way back we stood in line for 2.5 hours among angry Basotho loudly discussing their no-good government. (A quicky linguistics: the country is Lesotho, the language is Sesotho, one citizen is a Masuto and more than one are Basutho). Apparently, South Africa had warned Lesotho more than 6 months ago that they would have to take measures to curb the incredible corruption in the passport office and nothing had happened. The world cup was the perfect occasion to tighten down security measures and everybody who couldn’t show a passport accepted by the South African government (half the Lesotho population) is sent back at the border.

The consequences are dire. People with jobs in South Africa cannot go to work anymore and the already poor population is left with no income at all. Stocks for Lesotho supermarkets and hotels are held up at the border for days. In Lancers we regularly have guests who, tired of the endless waiting in the freezing cold, return to Maseru to spend the night in a hotel.

Since I was to check myself into the hospital at 11 on Tuesday 1 June, with this knowledge in the back of our heads, we presented ourselves at the border at 7 the following Tuesday. The drive to Bloem is about an hour and a half. We arrived at the hospital exactly at 10. Need I say more?

I had arranged with my Dutch health insurance that I would pay the bills here and submit them for reimbursement once back in the Netherlands, so I presented my credit card to pay the hospital bill in advance, and it bounced! And then it bounced again, and yet again. In the end Mel had to pay the bill.

I still have to hear from my bank why I cannot trust my credit card to work in a foreign country, which is a terrible nuisance as there is still a doctor’s bill to be paid. Apparently, it is very hard to understand for people in the Netherlands that things do not always work the same in 3rd world countries and that phoning them from Lesotho is only an option if the internet connection is fast enough to use skype out, which is usually only after office hours, and they refuse to respond by email “for security reasons”. That every phone call has to be made in public over an open phone line is apparently less of a risk.

The operation was as efficient as I had imagined it to be. At 12 sharp I was on my way to the theatre where some nurses and the anaesthetist crowded around the bed to do the prepping and explain the procedure. There was no time difference at all between the anaesthetist’s cheerful “sleep well” and my being fully awake with 3 different nurses around my bed. “Am I supposed to be awake?” I asked rather worried. “Yes dear, you are in the recovery room.” And I was on my way again, first for an x-ray and then back to the ward. Mel was still sitting where I had left him behind. I had been away for exactly 2 hours.

Friday, 2 July

From our Lancers Inn kitchen window we can see the local slammer. It was Mel’s idea that I might find a teaching job there, but I hadn’t done much about it until Angela arrived in May. Angela has a lot of experience teaching in Australia, Laos, Samoa and China and when I discussed my plans with her, she was enthusiastic immediately. So, one sunny afternoon we set out to find out whether there were indeed teaching needs in the jail. Armed with a letter for the director we had compiled beforehand and our respective CVs we wandered down the road and up to the gate, expecting to go through the usual formalities and security checks to get inside.

The guard greeted us with a happy “good afternoon grandmothers” and waved us through with a vague gesture towards a block of buildings, where we could inquire where the director was. The admin staff was playing games on the computer, but took time out to explain that we were at the wrong jail. We should go to the Juvenile Training Center. That is where the school is.

The JTC is about 20 minutes up the road from Lancers, excellent exercise for grannies. The reception there was similar. At our request to see the director we were waved through, so we walked up to an office block and knocked on a few doors until a guard came out to explain that the director was around, and could we wait in his office please.

The director proved a very pleasant young man in his early 30s who received us with great enthusiasm. He showed us round the premises. It wasn’t half as bad as I had expected. The dormitories look clean and there are no holes in the walls and the ceiling. There is even a block of toilets and showers. The boys sleep on mattresses on the floor, but they have blankets and warm clothing. The girls sleep in the women prison, but they spend the day in the JTC. Cooking is done by the kids themselves in the open air, but they get 3 meals a day and they look well-cared for. Quite a few of them come from far worse situations. And being sent to prison might well be their salvation. For some of them, this is the first time they get any education at all! And although it is just as easy to walk out as it is to walk in, very often the gate is wide open, nobody ever runs away, apparently.

The classrooms are a different story: filthy, messy, broken windows and furniture and freezing cold. But they all have blackboards and chalk and the kids have books and writing material. We have both worked under worse circumstances!

The school provides primary and secondary education. But there are never enough teachers. Some of the teaching is done by the guards, most of whom have not had any formal teaching training. Any help is welcome. We could have started the same day if we had wanted.

We started the following week teaching the kids – “all petty crime, mostly because of poverty”- that have exams to go through by the end of this year: a group of 5 CESC students and a group of Junior C students – no idea how that relates to British and American students. It seems to be close to O-level. However, on that particular Tuesdays I had the operation, so Angela did the teaching alone for the rest of that week as I was slightly shakier on the legs than I had foreseen. But, in spite of the fact that the doctor gave me a note for my boss saying that I needed to rest at least a month, I was in full form again the week after, be it with my arm in a sling, and Angela doing the writing on the black board. On the walk back we invariably dropped in at the Renaissance coffee shop to regain our strength, and to discuss teaching strategies, and the weals and woes of the world

Officially all the teaching takes place from 9-12. In the afternoons the kids do all sorts of chores: working in the garden, looking after the pigs, mending and repairing of buildings and furniture. In reality the kids are often still having their breakfast when we arrive, or there is a special roll call that takes forever. Usually we wait sitting in the sun, but sometimes when it is cold and overcast, we wait in Julius’ office.

On one of the desks in his room lies a big book in which the details of all the inmates is recorded. Angela is even more brazen than me, and she had no compunctions opening the book and reading the details out to me. Ehhh, petty crime? Eehhh no! The average level is: breaking and entry, armed hold-up, grievous bodily harm, violent rape, manslaughter ....

And they are kids! They are all vulnerable, damaged kids. Most of them have horrific life stories about their lives. They have all lost at least one parent. Some have no family left at all. Jail is the nearest to a secure environment that they have! They deserve a break and what little we can contribute, we will happily give.

However, there are a few little birds among them that are more difficult to place, like one of the girls in CESC. Her English is perfect and she has obviously had a good education in one of the international schools. She talks about ski lessons and holidays abroad. She is the only one who does the literature exam: Shakespeare, Richard III of all plays, a book of Indian (!) short stories and a number of prose and poetry books, all rather ill-chosen in my modest opinion for African students with little experience of the rest of the world. And so I find myself reading up on one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays but also, reading and explaining poetry again! Lat time I was involved in that was the 80s!

Tuesday, July 6

Angela and Mark fly back home today, and for the rest of the Month of July it is up to me to keep the flame of education burning. It is not always easy-going, sometimes rather like pulling teeth! The classrooms are cold, sometimes the kids bring a fire bucket with burning coal into the room, but that causes so much smoke that our throats and eyes are smarting when we come out. I prefer the cold. Besides, the kids are not always in a learning mood. There is always confusion over which teacher uses which classrooms and very often valuable time evaporates with the kids not being ready for class in time. But I’ll manage, I daresay, although from now on one of them will have to do the writing on the board for me as the shoulder takes rather more time healing than i had imagined.

So, with the organisation of the conference, the teaching and the preparation of the classes, I am suddenly busy. Time flies. We only have 7 weeks left here and there are still a couple of things we want to see, so we are now trying to be off on some trip every weekend – by bus. The rest of my days is spent finding out where we can go by public transport, there must be a system that clearly states which bus goes where and at what time, but I have not been able to detect that so far. It is all a matter of trial and error. For the longer trips I am going to find a tour operator. If Mel is to enjoy these outings too, we had better leave the Toyota in Maseru.

As ususal, photos are to be found on my facebook pages.

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