I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. RL Stevenson

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? Welsh poet, William Henry Davies

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The Drakensburg and Maluti mountains are FABULOUS!


25 - 29 JULY 2011
MOKHOTLONG
WOW what a bus trip, through gorgeous countryside, snow, more snow and then it’s looking decidedly dodgy to continue. But onwards we go over the Southern Africa’s highest road pass, Tlaeeng Pass (3275m) with a great driver. I chat to the girl in the seat in front of me who is heading home for school hols – Pulane lives across the road from GROW, where I had planned to so she kindly organises for us to be dropped at the top of the street, IN THE BLINDING WIND AND SNOW. 
Get a freezing room and soon discover that there is very little heating BUT the beds have electric blankets. So an early night to find the snow piled high next morning and quickly realise that I’m going to be snowed IN here!!!!!!!! ARRGGHH. I head out to the taxi rank with Pulane to find that maybe a taxi might go to Natal tomorrow, but no need to come to the rank – he knows where I’m staying and will pick me up! Service with a smile never materialised.
Next morning I pack and wait and wait until around 11am to head back to the rank to find there are no taxis going with passengers, only driving to see if they can get through. Hmmm after 2 nights staying in an icebox I walk around town to check out other accommodation options, with heating and find a B&B who also cooks food. So I move to make friends with the heater and TV there! Sights to see here include most of the population wearing blankets and gumboots, often riding donkeys, ponies or the occasional horse and most definitely holding some kind of stick if you’re a bloke! Thursday I head out early to the taxi rank, but NO GO, nothing is moving over the Sani Pass anytime soon. 
Pulane suggests I ask at the District Administrator’s office and they were a wealth of information. A helicopter had been sent from Maseru to Sani Top today, to help out the stranded folk there, but couldn’t land due to wild weather. The District has now sent a car up with ‘many bags of salt’ and with the taxis checking each day they hope to clear the road in the next few days.
Popular modes of transport
They agree that if I can get to Sani Top then as soon as the road is cleared there should be plenty of transport down to Underberg. I check back at the taxi rank and find a couple of passengers from this morning are trying to get through to SA by going back to Buthe Butha. Sounds like a plan but I will try contacting Sani Chalet to see how things stand tomorrow. In the meantime I’ve found a good kitchen for lunch, a nearby bar for a beer and the b&b serves a nice dinner. Too bad my days revolve around food – I will try and get walking some more at least, if I’m still here tomorrow. Day 4 and no taxi going ti Sani top. Plan B, yes 3 taxis went through yesterday to ButheButha so that’s where I’ll go today and try crossing at Calendonspoort then at least I’ll be in South Africa with a better chance of getting to Durban for the weekend. YAAAH. On the taxi now as I type, heading north and back over the Tlaeeng Pass – wish me luck!

FACT: Lesotho today has a collapsing economy with grinding poverty in all rural areas but locals tell me diamonds have been found at an reopened mine. The national university, has a new Dean, who has just announced it will reduce its intake from 6000 to 1000 students only in 2012. Lesotho’s environment in huge trouble with salinity, deforestation and erosion huge problems.
AND if you are from Lesotho (lee sue too), you are Mosotho (ma sue too) and you speak Sesotho (sa sue too)!

It snowed overnight?

Yep, it snowed some more overnight

Pulane and I in the snow

Pulane and her sister



Painted loo block

That black ice is annoying

Do you think we'll get out?

Convoy to Buthe Butha

ST RODERIQUE, Lesotho


22 – 24 JULY 2011
ST RODERIQUE
Visiting Sara
The house for St Roderique’s foreign teachers has no power, no running water and certainly no heating other than a spirit heater donated to them. Sara’s university has been running this program for over 20 years but as services have broken down, the nuns have not repaired or replaced utilities.
Tittie mountain TRULY
Meanwhile the nuns live with solar power, electricity, water tanks and staff to cook and care for them. Another case of volunteers being unappreciated and treated as unneeded, methinks. The teachers have 12 months each and they cycle about every 6 months, meaning the last teacher has gone home and the next one is due in a week or so, which works well for the newcomer. They are popular with the villagers but the work can be challenging in the sense that he staff don’t appreciate their experience due to their youth. Speaking of which, the village is dirt poor but Medicin sans Frontieres set up a HIV clinic and pharmacy here, now run with local staff giving locals from round abouts access to good healthcare. The countryside is very beautiful is harsh and very cold. Mountains surround the village but erosion is a huge problem here and across the country with the hooved animals contributing to the problem. These can be seen all over the country – herds of cows being led by young boys known as herdboys. Sara tells me the problem is that most families need their young boys to look after the cattle, which are a status symbol, till 11 or 12 and then they are sent to primary school till they drop out. Girls on the other hand tend to quite well educated here, generally reversing the trend I have seen in many other countries here. Weekend rolls around and I start to explore alternative transport back to Maseru other than the 4hr bus ride.
Sara and guests
We find the taxi comes twice a day and takes only 2 hours, but we walk about town telling everyone we meet that I would like to return to Maseru via Roma, which would take me up and over the surrounding mountains. Suggestions are made that if I could walk up the mountain to a certain road I would meet the road where the taxis travel. I decide that I would hire a donkey to carry my pack if I head out that way. Then we meet a woman who says she is heading out to Roma and will call in to conrim departure tomorrow. She eventually appears late in the afternoon to say that they are leaving tomorrow and will pick me up at 6.30am. No worries – an early start suits me. In the meantime Sara and I amuse ourselves cooking up feasts in the rudimentary kitchen. First night it’s a vego peanut curry, next day we make Pita bread, hommos and  falafel (that was yummy feast) then we try refried beans and eggs!
Angora goats are big business
Mmm Sara tells everyone that she cannot cook but I say she can follow a recipe to the letter and produce great food. Sara is of Salvadoran heritage and it was really interesting to listen to stories of her family and how they managed to end to be resident in the USA now.  Sunday we’re up bright and early and wait and wait and I’m soon ready to give up on the lift when they turn up at 8.30am and I farewell Sara to travel up and over the mountains and into Maseru within a couple of hours. I had originally planned to spend the night in Roma but the Trading Post was also fully booked until August! Pesky school kids! So another night at HaTsolo Royal Guesthouse, travel out to St Agnes again to find the weavers there. I soon find that they weave tapestries, not blankets and I certainly don’t want a tapestry, not that they aren’t very nice and the sales pitch is not unique –we are starving, please buy something.
Waiting for the taxi
The traditional blanket is now made in either china or India and is most definitely not wool – I’m disappointed and so are the weavers when I don’t buy anything. Molapo visits me later that night, tells me to cancel the taxi I’ve booked because he will drive me to the bus, at 5.30am! He arrives next morning at 5am and waits in his car for ½ hour till I’ve packed, sees me to the bus and I wish him well –a real gentleman!

FACT: Lesotho recently denied 26 Chinese ‘tourists’ from entering the country! The chinese were coming from Mozambique, claimed to be tourists, but failed to name places they intended visiting, leading to their detention and deportation back to Maputo. This incident made big headlines in this little country. There are many chinese here running very successful businesses here in Lesotho but they are not at all popular with locals. They tell me they avoid patronising the chinese businesses but seeing as they are so successful, someone must be buying from them!



Sara






The walk home

Dinner time

Posing is popular

Another rutted road

MASERU, LESOTHO

20/21 JULY 2100
LESOTHO – Country number 17 – LESOTHO
MASERU
Arriving at Park Station’s long distance taxi rank I’m quickly told ‘follow that lady’ who is hustling a couple of people away from the taxi. When I question a few folk about where exactly the taxi to Lesotho is, I receive two very different answers. I decide to go with yesterday’s place but later I find I should have ‘followed that lady’ (of course!). Waiting in the minibus, after a couple of hours of filling up, another minibus pulls up to transfer us to another station – this is where “that woman’ was going. We pull in, we pull out, we empty the bus, we fill another. OMG Eventually we get away and it’s a long drive over the country side to finally arrive at Maseru bridge around 5pm. Immigration on both sides is dead easy and soon I’m buying a Lesotho sim card and ask the ladies at the stalls if they know if a guesthouse in town. There is fallen sign and they ring this number assuring me its cheap, clean and in town. I’m soon picked up by Molapo who explains that his guesthouse is not yet finished but he will show it to me anyway.
Molapo was such a gentleman
Very odd – the Royal Guest House is nearly 6kms out of town at Ha Tsolo but when I telephone the Maseru Backpackers they are fully booked til August with a visiting American high school, BAH. Molapo takes me to a mall if I want to get any dinner or food, then tries a local guesthouse who want 400 rand for a room. Too much, she cries, so Molapa suggests that I can stay at his guesthouse if I am happy to use the bathroom in another room – no problems and only 150 rand. The three rooms are new – two rooms have beds but empty ensuites and the third room has a shiny new ensuite but no bed! I’m provided with a heater and extra blankets cause baby it’s cold outside, and there I sleep very well. Next morning I contact Lesotho Girl Guides and Molapo kindly drives me into town to make sure I get there safely. Its nice to cossetted but has the disadvantage of not making me learn where I am and how to get back there!.
Gorgeous Girl Guide Leaders
I meet with Millie Konote, GG administrator, Konosoangt Seetane, Projects Commisioner and then her sister Mpho Seetane Lesotho’s Deputy Commissioner. They are all so friendly and warm and I hare about tier latest project with Unicef and more projects in the pipeline which are Lesotho Girl Guides’ financial lifeline.  Mpho and I head out to check the Tourist shop, Lesotho Hat and on our return their driver has arrived and takes Millie and myself to meet with Chief Commisioner, Angelina Khoro. She has just returned from the World Conference yesterday and is so energetic, friendly and welcoming.  I also meet with her supervisor to further the cause of Girl Guides and to illustrate that is not just her who is travelling around the world for Girl Guides. We parted ways and I head out to a small village, Morija, to visit it’s ‘must see’ museum. For anyone planning to make the effort, what can I tell you but to stay home! It went something like this:
Me: “Hello”
“Yes?”
Me: “I’d like to visit the museum”
No response
Me: “Is the museum open?”
“Ten bucks”
I pay and ask where to start – bad move! I had unwittingly courted a guided tour.
Me: “Is that a real dinosaur bone”
“You know I asked that same question and I don’t think it is. I think it’s just rock” (no one explained to her what a fossil is?)
The Lesotho Hat HONESTLY

The Police tent REALLY

Me: “These are casts of dinosaur footprints from Lesotho?
“I don’t know, I’m only new here.”
And so it went on, into a second room of dusty exhibits with old signage.
Me: “What do those totems mean?”
“They are made of wood”
Me: “Yes, but what do they represent? Do they have any meaning?”
“I don’t know”
I honestly believe she was there just for her good looks, because she was gorgeous to look at. lol
Check out this cladding - aluminium cans

Leaving Morija, back to Maseru to head out to St Agnes where the best crafts come from – alas I’m too late and all the weavers have gone home. But it was a lovely ride home in the sunset, checking out the countryside. Molapo telephones me to enquire if I am ok because I have not returned and its dark - I assure its ok, and am ready to catch a taxi back now. Then came the hard bit – making my way back to the guesthouse. I knew the suburb, but the drivers wanted to know where in Ha Tsolo. No idea so another call to Molapo who tells a driver where I want to go (I’m still none the wiser) and the driver tells me to “ring the daddi (form of respect for a man)” when I am dropped “because there are many criminals there”. HMMM Off we go, and I find my safe and sound. Next morning I pack to meet up with Sara (net her in Durban) who is coming into Maseru from St Roderique. We lunch together and get the bus that leaves at 2pm. Four hours later we get to the end of the line at St Roderique. Its nearly dark and Sara leads the way with me keeping up to arrive at her house.

FACT:  Lesotho has 23% of its two million population living with HIV/AIDS and an estimated 100,000 children orphaned by ‘the scourge of the global pandemic’. Big numbers for a little country! Lesotho has the third largest numbers affected by HIV/AIDS after Botswana and Swaziland.


Such an important message for all african girls

The modern Mosotho woman



Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela


18 JULY 2011
JOHANNESBURG
MADIBA’S BIRTHDAY
Staying a couple of nights back at Sunbury House, its now easy to make my way out to Sandton and to Nelson Mandela Square.
Nelson Mandela was the 11th president of South Africa and today is his birthday. Nelson Mandela has asked for all South Africans to contribute 67 minutes of volunteer actions within communities, and the newspapers are full of suggestions. There is a clever display of lots of cups of coffee put together to make a picture of Madiba, as he is affectionately known here.  I spend an afternoon walking about the huge Sandton shopping mall but alas I don’t need or want for anything other than a sandwich for lunch!. LOL I admire the plans for more expansion and building but I have to wonder who is buying all this stuff because the stores do not seem well patronised!
Returning back to Johannesburg’s MTN taxi rank I search out the long distance taxi rank at Park Station – along with turning down offers to walk me there because it may be dangerous. NO, not dangerous, just a dogs breakfast in terms of organisation! 
But I find the place the Maseru  taxi parks and head back to Melville for a fab pizza from Ants.
Made up of cups of coffee
While there I thoroughly enjoyed eavesdropping on a very stimulating conversation in English, at another table. They were discussing philosophy! The deepest conversation I have heard in all my time here in Africa and just as enthralling. I was very hard restraining myself and not add my 20c worth. Off to Lesotho tomorrow yah
FACT: Did you know that there are more than 6.5 million search results for ‘Nelson Mandela’ on Google and over 10 million results for ‘Mandela’? Did you know that Madiba’s Xhosa name, Rolihlahla means ‘troublemaker’ and the literal meaning is ‘pulling the branch of a tree’? And did you know that Madiba’s great grandfather was a Thembu King, who was renowned for his skill in bringing stability to diverse Thembu clans in the early 19th Century?


Gandhi Sq and Johannesburg skyline

Madikwe and Mosetlha


16/17 JULY 2011
MADIKWE GAME RESERVE, South Africa
MOSETLHA BUSH CAMP
Yes, we can see you
This was to be a surprise for Terry because he had shown little interest in seeing animals during his stay here in South Africa.
My friends Bill and Jill had recommended Madikwe game reserve and this particular camp. So credit card ahoy, I booked us in and from Kimberley we drove 5 hours to arrive spot on time as requested. After being ushered in the Abjaterskop Gate and driving to the park administration we see a giraffe and a zebra in the first 15 minutes! We have to leave our car parked at the Park Admin office but we have a little trouble finding our lift to the camp here. Eventually she finds us and we soon arrive at the bush camp to be greeted by the ever smiling Bruce. He gives us the royal tour of the camp facilities and our standing tent accommodation pointing out the extra blankets for safari drives and promises of hot water bottles.
And we can see you too
There are a family here on their last night of a four day holiday and they have loved it here. The daily routine is lunch at around 3pm then a game drive with drinks and snacks at sunset and more driving to return for dinner at around 8pm. Then a 6.30pm start with another game drive with hot drinks and rusks, more driving and return to camp around 10.30am for brunch. Lay about in glorious sunshine till lunchtime and do it all again. Terry is his usual controlled self but I’m very excited to be looked after in style here.
Our driver was a lovely woman (wot’s her name, Terry?) and she does her very best to please by tracking animals and following up any sightings that get reported on the radio.
Here at Madikwe there is a lockdown of 2 vehicles only for any sighting with others requesting to be next in line. Very civilised with a lot of polite chat on the radio. On our first afternoon drive we see a lioness with 2 cubs, a mad baby wildebeest, various birdies and of course an elephant. The evening drive was not a busy and our guide struggled to sight very much. Our fellow guests are from Capetown, one a GP another a ENT surgeon with two big sons.
My fav photo
Not too offensive and not too interesting either really! Great night’s sleep  and the morning drive is also pretty quit. Not so our afternoon drive where its only Tez & I, what a luxury, we see a WHOLE pride of lions, and it was about then that Terry finally let himself go and expressed some amazement, excitement and eagerness to see more. Giraffes, elephants, zebras, wildebeest, rhinos etc. And I’m learning so much - now I know the difference between black and blue (straight horns) wildebeest, and black and white (square lipped) rhinos.  Our two days pass here very easily in comfort and soon enough Sunday rolls around and it’s time to hit the road back to Johannesburg to drop both the car and Terry at OR Tambo airport via Melville to drop my gear off. No worries with the car drop and then Tez sees me off at the Gautrain where I return to Sandton to find all the taxis finished for the evening – bugger. 150 rand later I get back to Melville and a great room back at Sunbury House.

FACT: The Sowetan Newspaper has a half page dedicated to Johannesburg Child Welfare advertisements. What are they advertising? CHILDREN! Orphaned, deserted and abandoned children, ranging in age from newborn to preadolescent. The pics are heart breaking and more so the appeals for natural parents or relations to come forward or “the child/children will be place in foster care or made available for adoption”. 

It's hungry work checking out the wildlife

It is soooo cold early in the morning



Can you see them yet Tez?