Sotho

Poéfrika:

Someone apparently thinks Dr. Maya Angelou is a “ho” because she supports Mrs Clinton and not Mr. Obama. Hmmm. I know this will generate hits for them, but who knows, maybe you can scold them, or tell someone else to scold them, your congressman, for example, could turn into an effective scolder, or blog shutter. Whatever comes to mind. For indeed, truly, this is stupid.

Lesotho — Anti-Chinese Resentment Flares:

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
24 January 2008
Posted to the web 24 January 2008

Maseru

For 14 years, Mathabo Mabekhla was one of Lesotho’s most successful entrepreneurs. Her ladies’ clothing boutique sold dresses, blouses and slacks imported from neighbouring South Africa, and boasted a client base that included cabinet ministers and their wives.

But dwindling sales forced her to shut down last year, for which she blames the country’s growing community of Chinese retailers. “Chinese are selling very cheap and not good quality things, and they are killing Basotho businesses,” said Mabekhla, 59.

She now sells cigarettes and beaded jewellery on the sidewalk in the capital, Maseru. “The Chinese, they must go back home,” Mabekhla told IRIN. “We don’t want Chinese here.”
[more…]

When I was a kid growing up in the Maseru suburb of Qoaling, we would go to the Chinese plantations not too far from home. There they grew and sold rice and other things. I believe that their project was government financed, or somehow in tandem with a government undertaking. I recall no problem at that time.

There were not only Chinese immigrants but Italian (Mataliana), Indians (Makula) and others. And they were mostly traders and shopkeepers. No problems there either, as far as I can remember. At Peka where I went to high school, there was an Indian trader with whose children we went to school. Apart from the usual kids’ jokes (on those that are different), there were no problems to speak of. In the capital, Maseru, most fast food cafés, as we called them, like the famous Maseru Café, were run by Basotho of Italian descent: white people who were visibly different. No problem. So what is the matter now? Why are we saying, “We don’t want Chinese here,” something we never said to other immigrants?

To my knowledge, when the hard times bite, the immigrant is always the scapegoat. It is happening in France today (immigrants are being forcibly flown to their countries of origin), it has happened in Germany where the Turkish population there has been blamed for economic woes, and Idi Amin chased Indians out of Uganda because they ran most retail businesses there.

I think that Basotho who are suffering from economic disease are right to vent their anger. But I do not think that immigrants are the right targets of that anger. We, the Basotho, have lived for many years on money sent home by our immigrant brothers, fathers, uncles who worked in South Africa’s mines. True, our labour filled a gap, but the Chinese in Lesotho are not exactly vultures. They have provided a certain amount of income for suffering families, through factories or retail employment. If we want to blame someone for being poor, we should blame the government. Governments are elected to work for the populace, and when the populace suffers, those governments, and them alone, remain accountable.

Blaming and attacking the Chinese, or any other part of the population, is discrimination, and it’s wrong. There are lots of Basotho who live and work overseas, and there are other nationalities who live and work in Lesotho. That’s the way it is, and i’m sure we wouldn’t like it much if Basotho who live overseas were attacked in the same manner. Our solution lies in being innovative and entrepreneurial. If we can’t, then there’s something wrong with the way our country is being run, and that’s where we turn toward the government and start asking questions. Khotso, Pula, Nala.

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Libya’s camels land in Lesotho: Africa: News: News24:

Libya’s camels land in Lesotho 10/01/2008 22:13 - (SA) Click here to find out more! # HIV doc files torture complaint # ‘Aids’ medic takes Libya to UN # Gunmen free Libyan diplomats # 2 Libyan diplomats kidnapped Maseru - A huge Libyan government cargo jet landed in this tiny mountainous kingdom on Thursday with Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi’s gift to the prime minister of four camels.

Lesotho’s foreign minister and another top government official were at the airport to receive the two adults and two calves, who were then whisked away to a secret destination. Four Libyan officials accompanying the camels refused to comment. Lesotho foreign ministry officials, who asked not to be named, said they were a present from Gadaffi to Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, who paid a state visit to Libya two years ago to establish diplomatic ties.

It was unclear how Mosisili planned to use the camels in Lesotho, an impoverished kingdom of 1.8 million people surrounded by South Africa. Temperatures can fall to below zero and rain is sometimes heavy - in contrast to the Libyan desert. Many people in Lesotho use horses as their main means of transport on the rugged terrain.

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clipped from methodius.blogspot.com In an ominous development, the USA has started establishing military bases in Africa. Why should they want to do that? Are they wanting to start wars here, as they have done in Europe and Asia?

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.
~Ronald Reagan

Probable look of Jesus

“There’s a reference in Paul which says it’s disgraceful for a man to wear long hair, so it looks pretty sure that people of that period had to have reasonably short hair. The traditional depictions of Jesus with long flowing golden hair are probably inaccurate.”

Deciding on skin colour was more difficult, though. But the earliest depictions of Jews, which date from the 3rd Century, are - as far as can be determined - dark-skinned.

“We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus. In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as ‘a man of colour’.” This probably means olive-coloured, he says. [source]
…………………………

No one took time to tell me that the picture of the blue eyed, blond haired ‘Jesus’ hanging from the wall in my parent’s living room was actually the family member of some European artist from the 16th century who was commissioned by the leaders of the white church to paint the Son of God in the image of a white man in order to enslave and dominate the original people of the scriptures. So I grew up thinking that I was God’s little nappy headed step child. [source]
…………………………

“. . . Jesus and his family spent more than a fleeting moment in Egypt. It is not inconceivable, for example, that Jesus might well have learned to walk and talk right here in Africa. Further, Jesus and his Jewish family, being Afro-Asiatic in colour and culture, would have appeared more chocolate-brown than Caucasian in complexion — more like a typically miscegenated African American, Kenyan Kikuyu or South African ‘coloured’.” (Gosnell L. Yorke, “Biblical hermeneutics: an Afrocentric perspective”, Religion and Theology 2/2 (1995), pp. 145-158; reproduced on-line at http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/press/rt/22/theol2w.html)
…………………………

In the December 2002 edition of Popular Mechanics, Jesus was shown as looking like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus’ disciple, Judas had to point him out to those arresting him. The implied argument being that if Jesus’ physical appearance differed that markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to identify. [source]

The image in question is the one shown here.
~Ed.
…………………………

Conservative Christians generally believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. They accept the statements in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. That is, Jesus’ conception did not involve male sperm, This would imply that God either:

• Created an living embryo with a unique human DNA in one of Mary’s fallopian tubes.
• Created special DNA which fertilized an ovum produced by Mary’s body.

Thus, Jesus would have had DNA that was either 50% or 100% created uniquely by God. If so, then Jesus could have had any height, hair color, eye color, skin hue, style of nose, etc. He may or may not have resembled a typical Palestinian from 1st Century CE. [source]
…………………………

Rethabile’s editorial:
So this is what folks have been saying about the race and colour of Jesus of Nazareth. Will we ever know for sure? Do we care? I’d venture to say we probably don’t. The deal, as far as I’m concerned, is that many of you out there will readily consider close to the truth this image, and not this one. Why is that, considering the region Jesus came from?

Science and computer programs say Jesus probably looked more like the image at the top of this post, than a blue-eyed, blond-haired man. So why is the world flooded with images of the latter and very few of the former? You tell me.

But I digress. I wanted to say that the deal for me is the fact that many use this ubiquitous image to fortify their personal beliefs about race: If even the Son of God is Caucasian, … (please add the rest). As more and more “evidence” piles up about the probable appearance of Jesus, perhaps more than a few racists may look at other races differently, and perhaps with a little more respect.

We shouldn’t really care what Jesus looked like; but now, all of us shouldn’t care. And nobody should use whatever physical image of Jesus is floating around in art galleries to further their beliefs about mankind.

A picture is a strong message, and one that is easily registered and remembered (it speaks a thousand words). Given what we’ve been shown over the ages, does what scientists suggest as Jesus’s image surprise you, shock you, revile you? Or none of the above? Care to tell us something about it?

UPDATE:
I urge you to try a meme that I’ve put up on my other blog. The result may just stun you. Here’s the link: Christ! Another meme.

Gardening lessons from Lesotho pupils
Jun 7 2007
by Abbie Wightwick, Western Mail

SCHOOLCHILDREN in Africa are helping to teach pupils in Wales how to grow vegetables. The charity Send a Cow has launched an educational resource for schools in Wales that aims to get children growing their own vegetables, with help from youngsters in Lesotho. [read more]

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Lesotho: I’ll Do Anything to Thump Lesotho - Massa
5 June 2007
Posted to the web 6 June 2007

Kampala
UGANDA Cranes’ goal-minting machine Geoffrey Massa has pledged to pull all the necessary stops to ensure Uganda makes next year’s Nations Cup finals as group three winners. The 22-year-old’s scorching assurance is being cultivated from the belief that Uganda’s group rivals Nigeria would struggle winning their remaining two qualifiers. [read more]

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Dual TB and HIV treatment key to Africa AIDS battle
07/06/2007 12:15
By Paul Simao

DURBAN (Reuters) - African, especially southern African, nations must link tuberculosis testing and treatment with HIV prevention programmes if they are to win the AIDS battle, a top World Health Organisation official said on Thursday. Dr. Kevin de Cock, head of WHO’s HIV/AIDS department, told the Third South African AIDS Conference traditional treatments for Africa’s rampant TB problem could worsen the AIDS epidemic and fuel the spread of the potentially fatal lung infection. [read more]

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New hope for the children of Lesotho
By Kate Silverton
BBC Breakfast

Combating the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa remains a challenge for the entire world. The issue will play high on the agenda at the upcoming G8 summit. UNICEF invited me to Lesotho to take a look at a new initiative to help pregnant women avoid passing the virus on to their babies. [read more]

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Rethabile’s Editorial:
There’s a new blog called Lesotho Practicum. Check it out. I read most of the posts and decided that the blog had room for improvement. If you read this, Kathy, what I mean is that your readers are probably more interested in how the Basotho are, not how they differ from Americans or Europeans, cultures that you are used to. Society, culture and language are usually good blogging topics when one’s in a new country.

There are times when I’m shocked by the poverty and undeveloped aspects of the country, and other times when it seems as if it could be a typical city in any part of the world. Some Basotho are dressed very modernly, with their leather jackets and high heels, and then there are others beside them wearing only the Basotho blanket. [source]

The blanketed ones are the real deal, it is them that are the Basotho. The others are a poor imitation of America and Europe. We don’t want Maseru to be like a typical city in any part of the world. No sir. We want it to be a city in Lesotho in southern Africa. Different from London and Los Angeles.

The hotel we stayed at was less to be desired. Apparently showering here is a rarity, as most places are not equipped with such things. I never realized what a luxury bathing on a regular basis was. [source]

That’s a low blow, Kathy, coming from someone who apparently left the very lap of luxury to go “work” with those who are less fortunate. For that is exactly what it is, luck. And even then I think it needs to be qualified, so let’s say it’s financial luck. My people are respectful, patient, understanding and helpful. I can’t say that much for yours. That’s why I felt I had to qualify the bit about luck. You’re rich, and I’m godly. I’m godly, and you’re rich. So what? Does that make one of us better than the other one? You think you’re godly, too? Think again. I at least will readily acknowledge that I’m not (financially) rich.

The reason “most places are not equipped with such things” is that we split dollars, and the bit that everyone has goes for food and other survival necessities. My advice to you is that you should stop criticising my country and feeling sorry for yourself. If you do so, you might learn something about life. I know how nice it is to shock friends back home with how dirty, poor, unequipped, non-western, ad lib, Lesotho is. But that’s not why you’re there, and as for your friends, they’d benefit more from your adventure if you cut out the sensationalism and talked to them about Lesotho and Basotho.

When I was in America (for 7 years straight), I never told my friends about the incredible wasting that goes on in that country, the food fights, the gas-guzzling ocean-liners Americans drive, nor about what I considered awful manners such as the ubiquitous belching, farting and spitting. I did talk to them about language (the southern twang), my host family, food, and other sociocultural matters.

So please start again, Kathy, and post consciously. If the people you’re living among and around read your blog, would they or would they not be hurt? And just so I’m sure it’s clear, saying we’re poor will not hurt us. But going on about how showering is apparently a rarity here will. See what I mean?

I blog here and at Poéfrika.
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Black History Month

Annielf tagged me. She tagged her readers and I’m one of those. So here goes. First, the rules:

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday, month and day only
2. List 3 events that occurred on that day
3. List 2 important birthdays
4. List one notable death
5. List a holiday or observance (if any)
6. Tag five of your friends.

Events on June 20 :

1. 1963 - The so-called “red telephone” is established between Soviet Union and United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis. The cold war was on big time.
2. 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court. Read the NY Times story linked to here-below.
   (Read the story : http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0620.html#article)
3. 1960 - Independence of Mali and Senegal. Two enormous African players in the international arena.

Births on June 20 :

1. 1928 - Jean-Marie Le Pen, French politician
2. 1949 - Lionel Richie, American musician (The Commodores)

A death on June 20:

1. 2003 - Bob Stump, American politician (b. 1927)

An observance on June 20:

1. UNHCR - World Refugee Day.

Tags go out to Stephen and to Chicken Scratches and to you, dear Reader!

Twilight Spider tagged me. I immediately warmed up to the idea of exposing six weird things about me. It is not an easy matter to decide what is weird. What’s weird for you may be completely OK with someone else. Question of culture, I guess, both family and national tribal. Could it be part of why we can’t live together in so many places? Perhaps.

I understand this tag to be light and not at all philosophical or “deep,” which is a good thing because I do not want to venture in that direction. That is where major differences lie, and where gaming ceases to be gaming. So, in what way am I weird?

1. I have no desire at all to follow fashion or to dress in a certain way because it’s in, or because it will please someone else. If my clothes are clean and tear-free, I wear them, and expect everyone to look at me for who I am, what I do, what I say, not what I wear. This is true when I go out or when I go to work. Drives wifey nuts. On the other hand, I, too, am not impressed by what others wear, but by what they say and do.
2. I like to start my meal with dessert, especially if the dessert is fruity. I’ve been trained not to do so in public, and I try not to. I don’t know if this habit comes from my childhood practice of munching fruit straight from the tree before meals, and after school before my “four o’clock,” or from the knowledge that eating fruit and vegetables before the other stuff is healthier and better for digestion.
3. I have flashes of violence a few times per day. I see or imagine the most violent things happening to me or the people I love. This used to bother me a lot, but I try to channel it all into something constructive. I follow the violence and “beg it” to give me a better ending, a more humane dénouement. If it does give me that, I hold the beginning of a poem. Not all poems I write, however, start with visions of rolling heads or dangling eyeballs. And this weirdness is easy to explain. I’ve lost a brother and a nephew to violent political death, and my dad escaped a raid on our home carried out to kill him. Looked at from that angle, I wonder if the flashes I have are that weird after all.
4. I fall asleep in the tub, for quite a stretch at times. It is one of the most relaxing moments I know, and it offers me quietness and softness and warmth, the perfect setting in which to shut the eyes and go away. I don’t take that many baths anymore — I shower. I don’t wanna drown.
5. I’m very uncomfortable in an airplane. Ugh!
6. I sing all the time. What could be considered weird is the fact that I don’t care who’s near or around me. I sing. People smile at me in the street and I smile back. I don’t wail or let it all hang out, I sing to myself but loud enough to be heard by passers-by.

Thanks be to Twilight Spider for tagging me. This was fun. it also allowed me to look at myself in a different way. Cheers for that. I tag you, reader, to try this.

Interesting blog: In An African Minute, by Joshua

Okay, I just had to come out with this one. Know the answer? Here’s the question: What place on earth inspired Tolkien to write his famous trilogy, Lord of the Rings?

I’m listening…

Propos de Pascal Sevran: un dérapage inadmissible.

Dans un entretien à Var matin, publié mercredi 6 décembre, l’animateur de télévision, Pascal Sevran, est revenu sur son dernier livre “Le privilège des jonquilles” où il écrivait: “La bite des noirs est responsable de la famine en Afrique”.

Pascal Sevran, a déclaré : “Et alors ? C’est la vérité ! L’Afrique crève de tous les enfants qui y naissent sans que leurs parents aient les moyens de les nourrir. Je ne suis pas le seul à le dire. Il faudrait stériliser la moitié de la planète ! “.

Le Parti socialiste condamne fermement ces propos, véritable apologie du racisme et de l’eugénisme. Nous demandons également à Patrick de Carolis, Président de France Télévisions, de sanctionner sévèrement leur auteur, dont les déclarations réitérées ne sont pas compatibles avec sa participation au service public de l’audiovisuel.

Nicolas Sarkozy doit aussi dire publiquement s’il se désolidarise de Pascal Sevran, qui compte parmi ses soutiens les plus actifs.

Communiqué de Faouzi Lamdaoui,
Secrétaire national adjoint à l’Egalité et au Partenariat équitable

This is a loose translation of the above quote, with my own comments interspersed. Pascal Sevran is a French TV host. In his latest book, “Le Privilège des Jonquilles,” he says, “The black man’s dick is responsible for hunger in Africa.”

When you hear that for the first time you go… what?, and you try for a second reading. When asked to clarify such an outrageous statement, he said, “So what? It’s the truth! Africa is dying due to all these children being born to parents who have no means of feeding them. I’m not alone to say so. We’re gonna have to castrate half the planet!”

The above quote is from the website of the French Socialist party. The rest of the article just condemns Mr. Sevran and asks him to come out and apologise, as well as Mr. Sarkozy, a presidential hopeful backed by Mr. Sevran.

It took me a while to decide to blog this, and now that I’ve decided to go ahead, I find I have no steam to go full force against Pascal for what he said. My original reluctance of definitely-not-worth-it has come flooding back; and so I’ll leave it at this. The one thought that does keep bugging me, coming back, this little whispering voice in my head, is, “Wow… now they want to slice our dicks off.” Niger has done better than me, Niger has hauled Pascal’s ass to court. His employer has also asked him to apologise or quit.

Tags: Pascal Sevran; Le Privilège des Jonquilles; Racism

I’m a politician at heart. I suckled it from birth. I and the rest of my family have always been involved in politics. I do not live in Lesotho, and the only way I could get involved was through blogging, so I blogged. My aim was manifold: to teach others about us, to provide news about us, to comment happenings in Lesotho, and to expose what happened in the past, to my family and to others.

All this while, I was sitting on another interest of mine, literature, poetry, to be exact. I’d write creatively when I had time, but blogging about Lesotho was first.

As I write this, things are happening in Lesotho. A new party has been formed (All Basotho Convention), and three parties have just come together to form one. This is a welcome development that tells me my country is on the right road.

Given all these, I have decided to spend more time writing than blogging Lesotho. If you linked to this site, or visit it, for Lesotho, please continue to do so. If, however, you linked or visit for the creative writing, please consider switching over to Poéfrika, where I will be most of the time in terms of creative writing.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I — I took the other one.

I’ve been tagged. Sokari tagged me to write “works of art that made a difference in your life.” Tough tag, and it has taken me a while to get around to doing it. I will look at it from two different points of view. Without being in any way full of myself, the art that has made a difference is the poetry that I write myself. I’ll tell you why in a minute. The other art is too wide to consider seriously. I have been slapped by music, painting and writing.

I lost members of my family, who were killed at a very early age. I believe that if I had not started writing poetry I would have gone under with grief. Poetry helped me focus and channel my energy correctly. Without it, the outcome is even today unthinkable.

As far as I’m concerned poetry, then, was therapy to me, and continues to play this important role in my life. I’ve exorcised my thoughts and my consideration of death by writing about death (one, two, three, for example).

As I say above, I’ve also been slapped by music (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Jarreau), and by painting (Guernica, Van Gogh’s stuff, Munch’s stuff). Theme albums do it for me, and perhaps the most influential in my life remains Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. It was political and tree-hugging and inquisitive, and yes, soulful and groovy. The message of his theme, protect the planet and love your neighbours, came to me loud and clear, and today when I listen to that album i still hear him asking us to save the children, save the babies.

Stevie Wonder picked up on the theme thing and worked a few messenger songs into his albums. Perhaps the most famous (and least loved by me musically) is Happy Birthday, written for the birthday of Martin Luther King.
[www.blacklooks.org]

Hooray! Bloggers on Lesotho have just seen their numbers grow by one. Lesotho Forum has made its entrance.

My Proust Questionaire, Damnit
I love Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire even more than I do Esquire’s “What I Learned” column. But look, I’m never going to be famous enough to ever merit a page in Vanity fair and even if that miracle happens, it will take years and I don’t have time to wait. So here are my Proust answers, because unlike 99 percent of the people Vanity Fair usually asks, I’ve actually read Proust.

That’s how Marlon James introduced his questionnaire. I got to his blog through Geoffrey Philp’s blog. I got to Geoffrey’s blog through Stephen’s blog. That’s the Internet for you. Virtual communities, some of which are burning to be lived outright. Geoffrey is preparing an interview with Marlon that should be interesting, as such interviews always are to anyone wanting to be a good writer or a good reader. Almost everybody, in other words.

Here’s my questionnaire:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Connecting with my wife and getting a poem to work in the same time frame.

What is your greatest fear?
That my kids do not get the same chances and opportunities I did. In other words, I’m afraid some idiot will blow the planet to smithereens.

Which living person do you most admire?
For me it’s people: my mother, and Nelson Mandela.

What is the most overrated virtue?
Mother-Teresaism. It should be natural and ubiquitous.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Prejudice fuelled by racism

What is your greatest extravagance?
Music and books. I wish I could afford more of ‘em.

What is your favourite journey?
Going home

On what occasion do you lie?
When my wife asks, “How’s this skirt?”

Which living person do you most despise
South African racists whose only dream is to discredit the ANC

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“How is it going?” and “If I were you…”

What is your greatest regret?
I’m sorry I didn’t become the football great that I could have been

When and where were you happiest?
Maryville College in Tennessee, where I met Mrs Rethabile

What is your current state of mind?
Bitter sometimes, exhilarated at other moments. I don’t know.

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
I would spend more time writing.

What is your greatest achievement?
Not getting angry at ignorant people in supermarkets who ask me where the potatoes or the onions are.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing what do you think it would be?
Me, but wiser.

What is your most treasured possession?
I own very few things. Perhaps a scrap-book of poetic scribblings that I mean to turn into a book one day.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery
Suicide

Where would you like to live?
Maseru, Bloemfontein or Gaborone

What is your favourite occupation?
Both writing and playing football

What is your most marked characteristic?
Timidity

What is the quality you like most in a man?
Frankness and bonhomie

What is the quality you like most in a woman?
Sexy, non-sexist womanhood

Who are your favourite writers?
Chinua Achebe, Robert Frost, Julie Humpert (she doesn’t know it) and David Diop. There are many others, but let’s stop there for now.

Who is your favourite hero of fiction?
Indiana Jones

Who are your heroes in real life?
Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela and my mother

What is it that you most dislike?
Racist hypocrites

How would you like to die?
I don’t wanna die. If I have to, I’d like to go while making love

What is your motto?
C’mon, you can do it!

Why don’t you do one yourself?

Selection   votes is great for Lesotho  67% 31 is unnecessary  22% 10 is bad for Lesotho  11% 5 46 votes total Poll powered by Pollhost. These results are subject to error. Pollhost does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

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The voters have spoken, and a majority of them say that Lesotho is right to have two official languages. My view is that it is necessary to have Sesotho and English as official languages, but not necessarily great. Let’s face it, it’s getting harder and harder to do commerce without the use of English.

The French can do so quite safely, for many around the world at least understand French. Not too many “get by” in Sesotho.

Despite our two official languages, we’re not bilingual. We speak English and Sesotho. Those Basotho that are truly bilingual have usually followed a path that veers from the usual one, either by studying abroad for a considerable period of time, or actually moving to go live and work there.

There is another factor, however, and it is cultural. And painful. Sesotho is disappearing — slowly but surely. Quick, in Sesotho how would you say, “Last year we borrowed money from the bank, but the interest rates were too high for us.” That’s what I mean. It is becoming easier and easier to speak a mix of both languages, and unfortunately it is English that is winning outright.

Some say, “Learn a new language and get a new soul” (Czech Proverb). True. But I think I’d rather (re)learn my own language and keep my soul intact.

Memory is unfathomable. It is a slate that cannot and will not be wiped clean. Perhaps it is because memory is built up from different stimuli, smell and sight and touch and taste and sound, which years later remain united enough to evoke memory as we know it. Sound is terrible. I can’t hear a 70s song without remembering and smelling Maseru during those years. Hugh Masekela’s “The Boys are Doin’ it,” Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa,” Johnny Nash’s “The Look in Your Eyes.” I will usually even feel the bump jiving.

Those times, however, were also rife with political tension, following the 1970 Coup d’Etat in Lesotho and the imprisonment of opposition leaders. My father was thrown in jail, we moved to a less affluent area of Maseru, and we skimped big time on clothes and on food. I remember that, too, when I hear that glorious music.

Smell can be pretty merciless, too, and roasted corn does me in. At six or seven p.m. on a winter’s night when I emerge from the Paris underground, after work, and see and smell roasted corn, I’m reminded of Maseru and Kingsway street; I’m reminded of blanketed women hovering over coal fires. Oh, the experience is almost always a passing flash, but a temporal knee in the groin it is, to be sure. And I don’t know whether I’d prefer to forget and not be reminded, or whether I couldn’t quite be myself without those oft torturous, regular flashes.

From the time I knew that my elder brother, Khotsofalang, wouldn’t be coming back, ever (it’s a long story), I got into the habit of studying young black men’s faces, in case one of them should happen to be his. In case what I’d heard was wrong. In case he’d in fact been brainwashed and just couldn’t remember where home was. I started doing so in Kenya, and continued in America and even in Canada, for the short while I was there. A cluster of black people, a group of young, black men, would be enough to have me ogling at and eye-balling people.

Nobody ever asked me, “What the hell are you looking at, dork?” What would I have said? It was a certain situation that would tell my mind to start eye-balling young men, a sort of subconscious stimulus, many black people, that reminded me of home, and had me believing that my brother might be among them. And as I say, the experience is usually over in flash. I’d stop ogling, but I’d be thinking about something related to him.

At such moments, for reasons beyond my grasp, I’d usually think of a particular day when we were at Peka High School, and there was a student strike. A strike meant the students weren’t going to class and were basically either beating up the teachers or burning buildings, or both. The local cops had already been called, and there was a stand-off, cops on one side and us on the other. A few friends and I were on top of a small building that housed the toilets, when out of the blue a few tear-gas canisters fell nearby and started hissing out their toxic smoke. I instinctively jumped off the roof into the cloud–the only possibility–landed on my feet, and heard, amidst the commotion and the confusion, “Rethabile!” My brother had been watching me? Over me? I hadn’t even known he was anywhere near where I was. “Rethabile!” he had shouted. I moved out from the cloud unharmed, and went back to the business of throwing stones at the cops.

I don’t know for sure when I stopped eye-balling young, black men. Perhaps it was after I had talked with my mum and found out that she was also doing the same thing.

Memory is a powerful force, indeed, and the five senses, plus the sixth, are there to make sure we can recall a lot of what has been influential and important in our lives.

PETROL HAIKU © Copyright ask angelodelosangeles.blogspot.com

Please vote here: geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com. It is important. The surveyor, Geoffrey Philps, writer and educator, would love to hear from Basotho and from Africans in general, but insists that everyone’s participation is vital. So there, go and vote, and please ask a friend to vote, too.

ROMA VALLEY © Copyright Lenka “Soare” Thamae

LESOTHO HILLTOP © Copyright Yannick Girardeau

I was directed to Geoffrey Philp’s weblog by Stephen Bess of Morphological Confetti, another blog to check out. Geoffrey’s writing exudes the islands of the Carribean, Jamaica, to be precise, so I immediately blogrolled him for mine and my readers’ sake. You see, I may know the music of Jamaica inside out, but there must be something more in the culture and in the language, and at the least, Geoffrey procures me that much. He’s thinking of putting up a poll

"on Rastafari that [he] would be very much interested in your views as a Kenyan (the poll will still be anonymous, but you can leave comments on the page) and which [he] would like you to share with other Kenyans, and maybe word will get over the border to Ghana and perhaps down to Lesotho…"

When the time comes I will post a reminder for y’all to go down onto the island and vote. In the meantime, do check out the blog and read on.

Every week-day morning I walk my two children to school. On my way from their school, while walking toward the metro to go to work, I would always see this tall, lanky, black man walking his child to school. One day I just nodded a mute greeting to him. He muttered something back. Ditto the following day. The, one day, I nodded my greeting, but he avoided my gaze, and whizzed past with his son. It got me thinking… I suddenly wondered why the heck I was trying to greet him. I don’t nod silent greetings to white men that I see in the street; but I do to almost every black person I cross.

Does that turn me into a bloody bigot? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it does. I rather think it is related to the togetherness that I, at least, have always felt towards other folks of African origin, and I think it was so before me and the time before that, too. A minority bands together and feels a kinship, if only for a moment that is as long as a muttered wassup, man? I don’t reckon, however, that I’ll nod to the lanky man ever again.

The Imperfect Poet
"Who am I? the proverbial question that we all seek the answer to… a poet & writer, living in Johannesburg, from Lesotho (and Ghana and Germany). Poetry is my passion, the reason why I live and, hence, I am on a quest to find the perfect poem."

Kojo writes on a daily basis, and his is the place I now frequent for my daily dose of jazz. Check him out. The fact that he’s from Lesotho has nothing to do with anything.

Morphological Confetti
"I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization." Frantz Fanon, (Black Skins, White Mask - 1952, trans. 1967)

Stephen writes on a variety of subjects, and posts pictures and video material as well. He’s unclassifiable, but always comes up with a good story and a vivid anecdote.

Other Men’s Flowers
"A medley, a mélange, an assortment, a collection, a compendium, a digest, an assemblage, a compilation, a gathering, a miscellany, a mustering, a farrago, a ragbag, a hodgepodge or a gallimaufry of trivialities, pastiches, parodies, anecdotes, bons mots, spoofs, trouvailles, plagiarisms, causeries, reviews, pensées, abstracts, recollections, aperçus, short essays….and quotations.I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own."

Tony is always interesting. He’s interesting in the morning and in the afternoon and when you need something good to read. It’s kinda like what Gump said about not knowing what chocolate you’re gonna get. That’s OMF. The surprise is in the what. The how is always good quality.

Naked Translations
"Stripping a text bare to reveal its mechanisms, its internal logic and its meaning to then transfer it into another language as faithfully as possible while using appropriate terminology and style."

Think translation is boring? Think again. Céline has a way with words, and relates stories of her language adventures in England as well as the nuts and bolts of both English and French. 

The Head Heeb
"Knocking down 4000 years of icons: musings about politics, religion, law, art and marriage - what else is there?"

And boy, do they get knocked down, those icons. Everybody reads Jonathan’s blog, don’t they? I had to include it this year because it’s always been one of my models and embodies many or most of the qualities I like to see in a great blog.

———- 

There are a few other blogs I’d have liked to have mentioned; let’s put them on hold until next year. I’d completely forgotten about Blogday and was reminded by Jeanne’s post (and she mentions some of my favourite blogs, too). 

Should a police officer who’s a member of a recognised "racist" group be left alone, or should such an officer be thanked and let go? Don’t we all have the right to think what we like and act how we like (within the confines of the law) in private? Suppose it were indeed so, would such a police officer not be tempted to act differently toward other "races"?

These are questions that eventually led to the sacking of Omaha, Nebraska’s State Trooper Robert Henderson. He had joined the Klan because his wife "divorced him for a minority." [Source]

Authorities insist Henderson wasn’t fired because he was a member of the KKK, but because he couldn’t "uphold public trust while participating" among the groups he disliked. If I were white and my house was being burgled, I don’t think I’d want a cop from a Caucasian hating group to answer my call and show up. I just feel like it wouldn’t be a very good idea.

Many law enforcement officers may indeed belong to this or that hate-group, but they probably don’t announce it; and when asked, they probably won’t say it’s because their spouse dumped them "for a minority." I’m glad Henderson was axed. He should go drive a cab, and pick passengers up according to whatever criteria he used when he decided to join a hate-group.

Webster’s 1913 Dictionary describes nymphomania as

Nym’pho*ma’ni*a, n. [Gr. ? a bride + ? madness.] (Med.) Morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire in women, constituting a true disease. [Source…]

The word is obviously a combination of nymph and mania, or bride and madness. Female madness. Men again. It is interesting to learn that most medical experts reject the word — or perhaps it is normal, seeing as to how it is an unclear and subjective word. What do you call a "morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire in men, constituting a true disease?" I thought so. I suggest, or rather resuggest, nympholepsy.

Coined in 1775 (by Richard Chandler, in "Travels in Greece") was nympholepsy, on model of epilepsy, with second element from stem of Gk. lambanein "to take;" defined as "a state of rapture supposed to be inspired in men by nymphs; esp. an ecstasy or frenzy caused by desire for the unattainable. [Source…]

The truth is, nymphomania doesn’t really exist, because there is no standard to measure it against. And if it did, it would be a largely masculine pathology. In order to say that something is excessive, we have to have an average value, and in the case of sex, there isn’t one. What is excessive for one is low for another. Somebody has said that a sex drive is considered excessive if it prevents one from living a normal life. Fair enough — but does that extreme really exist? If it does, what is the e-mail address of the woman who has it?

 

The same source also says that "in men the disorder was called satyriasis." Was because together with nymphomania, the condition is no longer considered a pathology. Carol Groneman’s book, Nymphomania: A History, should make for fascinating reading. The CNN.com review of the book is a good start. Ms Groneman says, in part, that

the standards of behavior for women were, of course, much stricter than those for men. And some doctors recognized the role that social strictures played in limiting women’s sexual expression. At an 1869 meeting of the Boston Gynecological Society, a woman diagnosed with nymphomania was brought before the gathered doctors. Typical of these medical presentations, the patient wore a mask, presumably to protect her identity. Even so, we can assume that exposure to a roomful of physicians must have been excruciating for this unnamed Victorian woman. One doctor responded to her in a patronizing, but possibly sympathetic manner: "If this woman could go … to a house of prostitution, and spend every night for a fortnight at sexual labor, it might prove her salvation." He hastily concluded that, of course, no physician could recommend such a course of treatment. [Source…]

So what’s a nymphomaniac? The woman next door, or the one on an advert billboard? The image is certainly used to full effect to sell, with the implicit understanding that if you buy that car you’ll have more sex, or if you buy that perfume men will eye you as a nymphomaniac and will therefore desire you. Notice that my wisecrack in relation with an oversexed woman’s e-mail address would make less sense if it was an oversexed man whose address was being sought. And that’s about where the whole idea of an insatiable woman, a nymphomaniac, peters out, with neither an acceptable social definition nor an accepted medical identification.

 

Lesotho: Land of Contrasts
21 Aug 2006 

"Even after being in Lesotho, I still find it a bit silly that it’s a country. It really seems as though Lesotho should have been "acquired" by SA by now."
Look who they sent to my country, Tarzan. Someone who thinks it’s a silly country. Someone who thinks my country should have been "acquired" by another. What the hell is that supposed to mean? You mean like you acquired the land of the Red Indian? Or like China acquired Tibet? Or like you acquired Iraq?

The Kingdom of Lesotho is there because Moshoeshoe said it was gonna be there. Many tried to "acquire" it, but were unable to do so. Moshoeshoe was both a warrior (he kicked British butt in 1851 and 1852) and a statesman (The most important role King Moshoeshoe played as a diplomat was his acts of friendship towards defeated enemies [Source]), and was reputed to have a weakness for the latter. He talked to and won over his enemies, if he could help killing them, which was most of the time. He wouldn’t have given you a passport into Lesotho. Now, Try this quiz, and tell me how you fare.

"As soon as you leave South Africa in any direction the roads just deteriorate and I always happen to be the person driving at that point. Electricity and thus streetlights are a luxury. So apparently are paved roads."
Yes, streetlights are a luxury in poor countries. Electricity is a luxury. Air-conditioning and midnight pig-outs on pizza and gas-guzzling liners on wheels and designer clothes are a luxury. But hospitality isn’t a luxury in Lesotho. Neither is respect, a lot of which I hope you picked up. Pride isn’t a luxury either. I’m sure you managed to see bunches of dirt-poor Basotho who greeted you with a smile, offered you something, and sang. No?

"I finally found the dirt road (and road being a term I use loosely) to the lodge we were staying at. Or at least that’s what the sign said. I absolutely hate driving in unfamiliar African rural countryside in the pitch black dark. After driving through farmers’ fields and across streams and over boulders we found the lodge (just go in the general direction of lights, in those rural parts not many places have electricity)."
Glad you found the lodge. But, say, what were you doing in Lesotho anyway, one of the poorest countries in the world, if you "hate driving in unfamiliar African rural countryside in the pitch black dark?" What kind of terrain did you expect to drive on? The 24 heures du Mans? And does that mean you looooove to drive in "unfamiliar American rural countryside in the pitch black dark?"

Did you not do your homework before leaving for Lesotho? I mean, surely you knew that it was a poor country, and that it had a lot of mountains… 70% of the country being rugged peaks called the Maluti and Drakensberg mountains. Surely you were aware of that! Did you know that Lesotho has the highest low point in the world? Yep. The lowest point in Lesotho is at 1400 m above sea level. That’s a mointain peak in many places. What did you think you were gonna be driving on? Route 66?

"All the people were dressed in their professional attire. Yet we were in rural Lesotho, so of course it’s just dirt paths everywhere. Everyone’s once nice shoes were quite dirty."
That’s just so terrible for the poor shoes! Good thing for some of the shoe-less locals, though. No dirt. What shoes did you wear that day? I bet they were of the dear kind… alligator or ostrich from southern Africa. That’s just like the unprofessional Basotho to hold a conference on dirt roads. 

"During one break I felt a bit out of place watching some traditional Basotho farm workers in the field covered in their blankets and walking along their donkey while I stood there in my nice clothes sipping some Coca Cola."
Exactly who are you, and why are you bent on insulting us? Coca Cola? And that’s your standard for sophistication? If I ever see you in my neighbourhood… No threats. If I ever see you in my neighbourhood I’ll encourage you to get out of my country and never come back.

"On Monday evening we were invited by the council of ministers from the SADC region to attend a little function of theirs. We were staying about 15 kilometers away and on the way there passed a few poor villages. These places didn’t have electricity, got their water from a well and lived in such small homes. The Lekahoe Club where this function was held was a different story – very fancy with free flowing drinks and food in abundance. After spending a day talking about the plight of the poor in Southern Africa, why not go see the government officials throw money at these sorts of functions where they try to convince the civil society sector that they really do care about the poor?"
Of course, African government ministers don’t care about the poor in their countries, but you do, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle Wanderingcrabb? That’s why you’re so concerned about the lack of electricity and other civilised things. That’s why those ministers should fix the road network, and that’s why you disliked the function at the Lekahoe [sic] Club, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle WanderingCrabb?

Lesotho is a country that has had to fight, most times literally, to exist. But we have never eliminated another people (you have), we have never conquered another country (you have), we have never declared war on another country (you have), we have never nuked anyone (you have), and we have never subjugated another race or ethnic group because of the amount of melanocytes in their skin (you have). Perhaps that’s why we don’t have tarred roads and electricity and you do? I’m just curious, what does your travelling companion, Corlett, make of all this poverty and lack of electricity in Lesotho?

When you decided to go to Africa, were you hoping to see Tarzan? You know, overflowing rivers gorged with greedy crocodiles and a white man clamping their awesome jaws with his bare hands — something the natives can’t do. But like Richard Pryor so rightly said,

"Tarzan wouldn’t last a week in Africa. They’d probably just call him ‘Crazy White Man.’ You’d go, ‘Where’s Tarzan?’ They’d say, ‘You mean the Crazy White Man? Eh.. he’s up in them trees with the baboons.’"

http://128.241.192.81/2006/08/blacks-are-biggest-racists.html

Somali Islamists have decided to ban the export of both charcoal and wild animals from their country. They bring up the reason of fighting deforestation/erosion and protecting rare animals [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5274620.stm]. That’s a good ban if ever there was one, and a fresh one, too, as opposed to the usual ones against music or film or statues or women’s faces. 

Suppose the ban was targeted at Somalis for chopping down trees for firewood and killing rare animals for food? Then it wouldn’t be a fair ban and would have had to be fought. Apparently the main importer of Somali charcoal and animals is the United Arab Emirates. And shouldn’t the ban come from their side of the table? Shouldn’t they not import such commodities from a country that is still suffering, if they want to help that country?

Lesotho is heavily deforested, marked by dongas and gulleys, and devoid of wild life. We grazed our cattle on whatever grass was left, cut trees down to cook with, and ate the last rabbits and antelope. Nobody can say a word, unless they provide electricity and jobs. Nobody has a right to criticise such a populace for surviving.

Spain was good to me and my family. We ate and drank well, and generally lolled on the beach with our cervezared bellies, or near and around the swimming pool with a plate of tapas within reach. Spain is much cheaper than France in many ways. I’ve been told that most of it boils down to France’s much higher sales tax (19.6%) as opposed to Spain’s (11% I think).

We almost came back without our six-year-old daughter, who was washed toward the "middle" of the sea while playing. There’s a small, reedy, almost stagnant brook that joins the Mediterranean sea at a certain point between the towns of Estartit and Pals, in the Costa Brava region of Eastern spain where we usually go. It rained quite heavily one night and in the morning the brook was sealed in by a sand bank: its seaward outlet was blocked.

Many people, young and old, played at let’s-dig-a-furrow to allow the water to flow to the sea. When someone finally did succeed, and the brook started emptying into the sea, kids started playing and "surfing" on the force generated by the ever-growing flow. My daughter did one slide too many, and was flung by a mighty force into the now turbulent and angry sea. I saw her whoosh past and flung myself behind her, knowing there was no way she’d ever make it back alone.

A man who was already in the water when it happened fished her out just before I reached her. Back on the shore, panting off the effort, I saw my wife in the turbulence back there, struggling to swim back. I yelled my brother-in-law’s name and together we went after her. I later learned that she’d gone in after our daughter, too.

We were just getting back when we saw my niece whoosh past on the darned brook slide into the now very angry sea. I cursed, and bro-in-law (her dad) and I dived back in after her. He got to her first (he’s a much better swimmer) and helped her out. Back on the shore, I saw my son on the other side of the brook slide, looking terrified.

Bro-in-law and I crossed over (a ways upstream to avoid the strong current) and got him. When we reached him he pointed to a man and said, "C’est ce monsieur qui m’a sauvé la vie." (That’s the man who saved my life). Our seven-year-old son had nearly been wrenched away from us, too. And we hadn’t even seen it happen!

Bro-in-law swung him onto his shoulders (apart from being a better swimmer, he’s also taller than I am) and we started back, even farther upstream. When we were at about the middle of the brook, I felt the bottom give from under me and I instinctively started swimming. We’d reached a deep spot. As soon as I started swimming and not wading, the current started pulling me… I saw bro-in-law’s head disappear completely, as he couldn’t swim with the boy on his shoulders. But he kept walking, and a few seconds later emerged, spitting and gasping for breath.

A small group of on-lookers had now gathered around our family.

It wasn’t until the next day that I found out just how famous we’d become in that small holiday resort. I was coming from the shop with some baguettes and pastries when I passed two women walking in the direction of the shop. One of them actually "crossed" herself and mumbled something (a prayer?). When I told my wife, she said she’d had a similar experience, too.

An adventure to remember, and a message to remind us that life is precious, that life can go easily, and that nature is not only beautiful but is also powerful and dangerous.

I’m in Spain having an Iberian ball. Blogging will resume upon my return in a little while. Vive Lesotho!

1. http://128.241.192.81/2006/07/fuck-off-neil-watson.html
2. http://southafricamoving.blogspot.com/
3. http://itisthequestion.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-drives-you-mr-watson.html
4. http://hoox.wordpress.com/2006/07/08/102
5. http://www.realsouthafrica.co.za/
6. http://www.joblog.co.za/2006/07/how-to-keep-tourists-out-of-the-country
7. http://commentary.co.za/archives/2006/07/05/crime-exposed/
8. http://www.africans.co.za/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1022

Got a link? Something you’ve said against the idea that tourists should be kept away from South Africa? Send it in, I’ll add it to the list.

Tony seems to be amused, sitting next to Lesotho’s Prime Minister, Pakalitha Mosisili. It was at the occassion of the Commonwealth meeting in Australia, when the big question was, "What should we do with Zimbabwe?" It was at the beginning of March, 2004, if you remember. The meeting lasted four days, and as the Beeb reminds us, "President Robert Mugabe’s government is accused of breaches of democratic rule and intimidation during the election campaign ."

I did just post this for the beauty of Tony’s smirk which seems to be saying, "Well look at that… How can he breathe in that thing?" [ Source… ]

Yes, why is the Occident rich and Africa poor? I have in the past looked at the question from one angle, the one of Why is Africa poor? [Here] Today I’d like to ask, Why is the Occident rich? And thank you, Bryan for providing the viewing platform. I would appreciate the reader’s simple reply to this simple question. And unless otherwise stated, I would also like to include that reply (and corresponding hat-tip) in my upcoming post on just why the Occident is rich. Thank you in advance for your participation.

Maseru - Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates will this week make his first visit to Lesotho in the company of his wife and former US president Bill Clinton to visit various Aids projects. [www.iol.co.za]

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Yes, of course
(3)
No, it isn’t
(6)
It depends
(7)
Bashing = Hatred
(8)

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“Lesotho Returns to Ottawa After 10-Year Hiatus: Ottawa’s diplomatic community just got bigger as the Kingdom of Lesotho re-opens its high commission with the main goal of increasing trade with Canada.”
[www.embassymag.ca]

Why do we build dams? Do the advantages of having dams outweigh the drawbacks, or vice-versa?  The WorldWatch Institute (many thanks to Sokari for directing me to the article) wants to know, or rather tells us that the pros do not outweigh the cons. Humans normally erect dams to provide drinking water, generate power, ease navigation, facilitate irrigation, help control floods, and make sailing and other water activities possible. The list is not exhaustive. But to fulfil it, need we overlook dwindling fish stocks, moving human populations from home and land, disrupting the ecosystem, encouraging disease, paying through the nose for the maintenance of dams, high costs of potable water that is of lower quality, and being at the mercy of droughts?

"The positive and negative impacts of dams in the Africa/Middle East region" [www.dams.org] have been debated on many occasions, the dangers have been stripped bare, both for humans and for local flora and fauna. So why is Lesotho in the process of building a five-dam system, including the 182-metre Katse Dam for the benefit of the advantages listed above, with seemingly no regard for the disadvantages, equally listed and well-known? To be sure, Lesotho is hardly the only country building
dams.

In the African region there are at least 1 272 large dams, whose main purpose is irrigation, followed by water supply. South Africa has the most dams in Africa (539), followed by Zimbabwe (213) and Algeria (107). [www.dams.org]

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always looked at Lesotho’s water, together with diamonds and tourism, as the route out of poverty. The dam network project unfortunately seems to have further impoverished the population, though not the top layer — the fat cats — which has actually become richer. I’ll say this for Lesotho, though, the law sensed cheating and backhanding, and the law acted accordingly. Lesotho’s diamond mine has recently reopened, yielding some fat kimberlites as expected. Its future as the saviour of Basotho is, however, unsure, as it is being sold.

Two of the project’s five proposed dams, the recently completed 182-metre Katse Dam (the tallest in Africa) and the proposed 145-metre Mohale Dam, have already been funded by the World Bank. The latter is expected to “flood some of the most fertile land in Lesotho, where agricultural land is extremely scarce and food security a serious issue [http://lists.isb.sdnpk.org].” What can the government of Lesotho do? More important, though, what can displaced farmers do?

Some have suggested that the 1986 Apartheid government in South Africa encouraged a military coup d’étât in order to get its hands (its mouths in this case) on Lesotho’s water. They go as far as calling it the Lesotho Water Coup. If it is true, the question remains, what was South Africa to do? There’s this small country with lots of water, and then there’s the thirsty South African industrial region (Gauteng).

South Africa sought greater access to Lesotho’s water supply.1 The South African province of Transvaal faced critical water shortages, and, despite 30 years of negotiations, the South African government could not reach an agreement with Lesotho for water rights. Within months of coup, the two governments agreed to the Highlands Water Project, which diverts water from Lesotho’s mountanous regions to South African farms and industries. The timing of the agreement suggests a close link between South Africa’s involvement in the coup and the dispute over access to water. [www.american.edu]

Korinna Horta, an environmental economist with the US-based Environmental Defense Fund, says, "The LHWP is likely to overwhelm Lesotho and determine its political economy for generations to come. The sheer size of the project diverts attention from any other possible development programs for
Lesotho" [International Rivers Network Lesotho].

And then there’s the government which, in dire need of cash, had to act. Lesotho does have nothing but water, diamonds and manpower. Lesotho’s tourism industry is begging to be developed. South Africa has recently established quotas for manpower from Lesotho and other nations. Many Basotho suddenly found themselves out of work almost overnight. Mind you, I’m not saying the government’s hands are tied; the government must find solutions, must give diplaced folks compensation. If you’ve got ideas about how to get around this seemingly unsolvable problem, I’m all ears. And I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

I did not know Michelle — Meg — and was just an admiring user of her talent. I have no business talking about her, you could say, but you see, people who did know her portray her as this conscientious, lovable, fighting person. If that is anywhere near the talent and spirit evident to everyone else, then she must have been some woman indeed. I guess the above endeavour is a bit of why they portray her as such. Her Mandarin Designs are quite marvellous, and rather easy to use as she chews the code before offering it to us. Here are some of her friends bidding her farewell :

—- http://home.egge.net/~savory
—- http://128.241.192.81
—- http://allied.blogspot.com

NB: If you decide to use the above Food Not Bombs message, be aware that in the HTML you should modify this http://orlandofoodnotbombs1.org to this http://orlandofoodnotbombs.org (remove the 1).

I just couldn’t help putting this up for those of you who speak or are learning Sesotho. It’s a PowerPoint document that you need to download (ho theohelisa) and run through your favourite anti-virus program, just for good measure. Or just open it online. And enjoy. U tla e fumana atereseng e latelang: http://r.masilo.free.fr/tse_ling/mahe.a.linotsi.pps

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Ruthlessly lifted off Mike Golby’s blog which has been pictorially talking about South Africa and the Cape for a good while already.

Clothes/Vêtements: Sesotho Crossword Puzzle

I guess after scoring a goal most everything is authorized in football: tearing down the field, somersaulting, putting one’s jersey over the head, punching the air Raphael-Nadal style, or dancing with the corner flag Roger-Milla style.

John Pantsil, a Ghana defender who plays professionally for Hapoel Tel Aviv in Israel, pulled out and waved the Israeli flag to celebrate each of the two Ghana goals that saw his nation defeating the Czech side on 18 June 2006. I must admit I was baffled, and imagined France’s Zidane whipping out and waving the Spanish flag, or Portugal’s Cristian Ronaldo doing the same with the Union Jack.

I’m still baffled. What did Ghanaian fans make of the gesture? And more important, why did Pantsil celebrate national pride by waving the flag of another country? On a separate issue, some observers picked up on a play-on-words and proclaimed: Ghana Signs Blank Czech! I say: Czech Bounces Against Ghana!

Ghana shocked the Czech Republic - which defeated the United States 3-0 last Monday - with brilliant strikes by Gyan Asamoah and Sulley Muntari, after which Pantsil showed his loyalty to his club’s home. Sources at Hapoel Tel Aviv [where he plays] disclosed later that the Ghanaian international had promised to perform the act if his team scored in the World Cup. [www.jpost.com]

Other Opinions:
— http://powerlineblog.com
— http://supernatural.blogs.com
— www.davidkeyes.org
— http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com
— http://occidentality.blogspot.com
— www.publiuspundit.com

I miss home…

I’m home-sick…

sick…

sick.

1. If Africa’s rich, why is it poor?
2. Would it help Africa if its regional communities (eg SADC) grouped into much more than monetary entities?
3. Why do white people think they are superior?
4. Would you let your child marry a person of a different colour?
5. Why has there been no retaliatory bloodshed in South-Africa since apartheid came to an end?
6. Affirmative Action, like communism, does mean well, but unlike communism, does it do well at all?
7. What exactly is the role of the United Nations, apart from what the United Nations says its role is?
8. What cruelty is this: to put man on a planet, and let him savage it?
9. What is the contemporary American’s stance on what happened to the native American?
10. Why are there so many coup d’états on the African continent?
11. Why do other African countries not hold Truth and Reconciliation sessions to heal scars, like South-Africa did?
12. I understand why America went into Afghanistan. But why did it go into Iraq?
13. Does having a lot of money dull the spirit and the senses?
14. What are the three greatest songs of all time? In other words, which three would you need to have with you on the proverbial exile to a desert island?
15. If God exists, why are we going through what we’re going through?
16. Did Albert Gore win or not win that fated election?

(more…)

If you circumcise a man you reduce the chances of his acquiring AIDS, so says the results of a three-year study conducted in South Africa. It is true that the inside of the foreskin and the glans that it covers are a breeding ground for many a germ. Completely removing the foreskin should therefore do the trick.

Initiates from traditional African schools are/were normally circumcised, but apparently under sub-optimal conditions, so much that some die/died due to the act. The hospital may provide the answer, but only if there’s enough staff and equipment and space. “In Swaziland, which has the world’s highest HIV rate at 33.4 percent, men wait for months to undergo circumcision due to a shortage of surgeons. [news.yahoo.com]”

We need everything we have to hurl at AIDS and prevent its onslaught. The UN has just announced that the disease seems to be losing speed: it is no cause for jubilation, but for striking back and protecting ourselves. That will have to do until we find the virus’s Achilles heel. And we need to remember that whether circumcised or not, wearing or not wearing a French letter when having sex is still a matter of life and death.

Bashing can come in many forms. Make no mistake, they’re all wrong, even when they are in jest. In the first article on Bashing I talked about telling nigger jokes or other inappropriate jokes: “Hey, Jackson, can I tell you an inoffensive black joke?” There are very few inoffenssive ones because by necessity they’re based on racial stereotypes. Blacks are lazy, whites smell bad, Jews are stingy, Italians are dirty, the list is long. It’s hard to squeeze humour out of that. It’s Almost Supernatural says

People in a democracy should not defend a person’s right to hate speech. To brand some citizens as inferior to others on the grounds of race, religion, or sexual orientation is inconsistent with the fundamentals of a liberal democracy. When freedom of expression is no longer viewed in isolation of other values we can begin to realise that restrictions are needed. [http://supernatural.blogs.com]

In effect, if it’s a democracy, we do not consider only the rights of the basher to bash, but also the rights of the bashee not to be bashed. It’s fundamental. That leaves us then with checks and balances, and common sense, mostly. A Christian who tells atheists they’re stupid is using religion to bash. An atheist who tells Christians they’re stupid for believing in Jesus Christ, or in the Bible, is using religion to bash. Both instances should be considered religious slurs.

In terms of religion, if being a Christian is so good, then there’s no need to yell it to the world with a megaphone; by the same token, if atheism is so great, why shout? My solution? Live it, be the example, and those who are in admiration may wonder why you’re so happy, or so strong, or so whatever, and conclude that it’s your religion or non religion.

The point I’m trying to make encompasses religion and other choice concepts. Telling others they’re stupid and puerile for their beliefs is bashing. It’s like gay bashing, and it’s like telling nigger jokes. It’s like saying, “Hey Jackson, can I tell you you’re stupid for believing in/not believing in this?” No, you may not.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission refused to reconsider on Wednesday its decision to fine 20 CBS Corp. television stations a total of $550,000 for airing pop singer Janet Jackson’s breast flash in 2004 [Source: Reuters.com]

Two years later Janet Jackson’s boob is still making headlines, while a three-girl tongue-kiss on the telly has been just about forgotten. Even as it happened, the kiss raised no eyebrows, while the boob raised eyebrows and everything else that the FCC could raise, including money: the FCC wants its fine paid.

Two months ago I speculated as to whether the difference, in the way the two cases were handled, was because Janet Jackson is black, or a Jackson. Or whether it was because Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are white. I’m still speculating.

• Bono in Lesotho, 18 mai 2006
  As someone who travelled to Lesotho not too long ago, it was cool to hear that Bono … “Bono is due to announce a new initiative to fight HIV/AIDS in Lesotho’s … The Apparel Lesotho Alliance to Fight AIDS (ALAFA) project will ensure ….
  [http://marklee.typepad.com]
• Angola wins their friendly against Lesotho, 2 mai 2006
  Hello! Anyone at home in IRIFF?! Angola just “kicked Butt” in a friendly against Lesotho. Are we going to get a game with someone, anyone, anytime soon?
  [http://iran.worldcupblog.org]
• The Bana Project of Lesotho, 8 mai 2006
  The country of Lesotho was recently in the news as Prince Harry announced a new charity … But as many of you know, they are not the only beacons of hope in Lesotho. The Bana Project of Lesotho continues to be a vital, growing project ….
  [http://allensays.blogspot.com]
• Lumela / Dumela, 22 mai 2006
  Lumela / Dumela Lumela in Lesotho and Dumela in South Africa are the Sesotho greeting. Literally, the word means….
  [http://sesotho.blogspot.com]
• Maseru, Lesotho, 17 mai 2006
  We arrived in Maseru, Lesotho at 1pm, checked into The Lesotho Sun Hotel before we drove to the factory, Precious Garments, where the Gap (RED) t-shirts are being manufactured. The factory has 4500 workers, 85% of whom are women….
  [http://joinred.blogspot.com]

‘Crusading pop star BONO put his six-nation Aids campaign in jeopardy when he was halted at the airport in Lesotho, South Africa because of his bulging passport. The U2 frontman, who was scheduled to jet to Rwanda and Tanzania from Lesotho, was shocked to discover there were no pages left in the document for any more onward travel. The Irish Embassy rushed to Bono’s aid, issuing him with an emergency passport. Press photographer KIM NAUGHTON, who is chronicling the singer’s African odyssey, stepped in to help, capturing Bono’s image - without his trademark wraparound sunglasses - as a makeshift passport snap. He said, “I can’t believe we’ve been so stupid.”
22/05/2006 17:37 ‘ [http://breakingnews.iol.ie]

It is also super dumb to say the guy was stopped at the airport in Lesotho, South Africa. Where in the world is that? I hear this kind of thing a lot and it gets up my nose. Why does nobody ever say, at the airport in Zambia, Zimbabwe? Or at the airport in France, Belgium? At the airport in the USA, Mexico. At the airport in Argentina, Venezuela. At the airpot in Malaysia, Taiwan. It’s silly. I was having a translation of my papers done once when the translator (a sworn and legal one at that), said

“What’s Lesotho?”
“It’s a country in southern Africa.”
“Let’s see this…” Consults worn encyclopaedia… “It’s in South Africa.”
“No, it’s near South Africa,” I whined.
“It’s Basutoland?”

And on and on we went. I left thinking I’d convinced her, but when I came to get the translated documents, I was suddenly born in Basutoland (Afrique du Sud). Just like that, with the Afrique du Sud in parentheses for good measure. I paid her and left, but I was fuming. On another occasion, I’d just had a motorcycle accident. When I came to, in the middle of the road, I was surrounded by cops and paramedics and sapeurs pompiers. They gently picked me up and transported me to one of the flashing ambulances on the side of the road. Once inside, the questions began: Date of birth? Address? Age? Country of birth? Ad lib…

“Lesotho,” I said.
“Pardon?”

So I went into my well-oiled speech about where Lesotho is and that it’s not a province of South Africa but an independent state, and that though Lesotho has no embassy in France, it does have one in England, in Belgium, in Switzerland, and in many other countries. And the guy who was filling the form went,

“Je vais marquer Afrique du Sud quand même.” Or, “I’m gonna write in South Africa all the same.”

Today if you look at my accident report, it says that I was born in South Africa. Fine, but I won’t accept the same treatment from a journalist. Those paramedics didn’t have Google at their disposal, and it is in any case less their business than it is for a reporter. Gets up my nose.

Sotho is putting up a new poll tomorrow. The present one, Are Basotho Xenophobic?, was inspired by a post on Idland about the kind of treatment Basotho in Lesotho mete out to the Lesotho Chinese population. Please read the original post at Idland, as well as Sotho’s subsequent post on the same subject. The poll netted the following results:

‘Course they are (5)
‘Course they aren’t (10)
No, they’re racist (1)
Who isn’t? (7)
Who are the Basotho? (1)

24 votes in all

Shock Treatment:
With reference to your behaviour in these past few years, I’d like to inform you that more and more people are waking up to the fact that the premise of your beliefs rests on scorn. For example, today more and more performing artists and others are spreading the message, and it seems to me that you’re more isolated now than you’ve ever been. One of your complaints is the practice of affirmative action, usually observed in places where you have recently been, like America and South Africa. You say that qualified white people are not getting jobs while unqualified minorities are. In America, affirmative action “can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man" [www.washingtonpost.com].

One thing that’s clear is that as long as we’re physically different, racism and discrimination will never leave our world. Unless something enormous happens. Something more threatening than an ominous cold war or a murderous hot one, something bigger than a natural catastrophe, something deadlier than any killer virus or monstrous organisms, more unthinkable than any evil you can imagine. Wars and viruses have so far not been able to right the world, and I doubt they ever will. We could bring up "religion" at this juncture as a possible solution but frankly, "religion" has been one of the bigger dividers of men and remains so, even as I type these words.

The truth is that humans and most other animals are conquerors. Dogs piss out a territory; humans kill or enslave those they find on a territory. Throughout their history, those humans with more advanced technology were able to travel wide, and wherever they did, they killed or conquered other humans they found there. It is amusing that as we plod onward as a species we’re only just beginning to realise the value of protecting other species. Protect and feed the panda, but expose and starve Darfur.

In the face of adversity, folks have come together before. In Africa, villages would be foes and nations enemies; they would fight wars and struggle against one another until something big and unexpected came along, whether slavery, colonialism or apartheid. Then they’d suddenly come together as siblings, in Africa, America or the Carribean, one against a common enemy. That is why black people call one another "brother" or "blood". No one else that I know of does. European tribes fought amongst themselves, too. They have just never had to deal with unimaginable adversity. Too bad Hannibal failed to make it all the way across.

In order to realise and thus combat racism and discrimination, humans need an unimaginable shock, right here, right now, something to pit earthlings against a common enemy, preferably one with more firepower and with nasty, malicious intent. Unfortunately for me I don’t believe in flying saucers and little green men. Not today. So I don’t think that kind of threat is on its way here. But I’m afraid it’ll take nothing less to knock sense into humankind. For a few weeks the East Asian tsunami had the world acting as one, for the benefit of other fellow humans. At that time, there had just been danger that was unpredictable, that was far superior in strength to humans, and that could potentially have hit any other human. So we bunched together.

Similarity of Whites and Blacks:
So, if racism and discrimination will never leave the world, you’re perhaps wondering what I am prattling about. Well, my potential friends, I happen to believe that all humans harbour discriminatory thoughts, drilled into them by culture and through other means. You’re not the only ones. However, the question isn’t whether or not to harbour such thoughts (all humans do, whether they like it or not), but how to overcome them. You’re walking down the street and you see this Latino spitting. How could you not think or say, “Dirty Spic,” like so many would? How could you be told by a black person that you smell bad and not think or say, “Fucking nigger. Needs to be put in his place," like so many would? How could you hear, “We don’t serve your kind here, boy" and not think that “honkies” are all the same “fucking racists?” It’s hard, yet humans need to see other humans as just that: humans — and not as colour or as belonging to a group. People will always be outwardly different, which unfortunately puts other-feature humans in their vicinity on guard. With practice, this habit could go away, white ladies could stop switching their purse to the other side when approaching a black man.

There are more genetic similarities between blacks and whites than among whites themselves. Black people in one part of the world differ with those in another part in a significant way. And that gap is wider than it is between blacks and whites. Simply put, the criteria that you, Mr and Ms Racist, usually refer to when you distinguish race, are but skin deep. Is the place of origin sunny, snowy, windy or what? Is social life there calm, turbulent or what? These are what determines your criteria for distinguishing race.

“Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,” said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. “We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world.” It is timely that scientists are now realizing what many indigenous people and our history have been saying to us. The scientists did not set out to prove the interconnectedness of us humans. They were searching for European greatness; they were searching for products to further exploit the sick, and this allowed for the unearthing of fundamental truths. www.trinicenter.com/sciencenews

Race is terribly relevant to life outcomes. The likelihood that toxic waste has been dumped in your neighborhood, your ability to get a home loan, the quality of your kid’s education, connections to job opportunities, whether or not you’re likely to be followed in a department store or pulled over by police, are all influenced by your race. Race does matter. Not race as genetics but race as lived experience, what sociologists call “social” race. Social race is an important variable for health researchers and epidemiologists. www.newsreel.org/guides/race

What Exactly is Racism?:
It is different things to different people. To see what I mean, think of the idea of terrorism. To one group it’s fighting for freedom, to another it’s terrorism. Racism is somewhat similar. Answers dot com says,

rac·ism (rā‘sĭz‘m)  n.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
rac‘ist adj. & n. [www.answers.com]

Notice that the definition does not declare as racism acknowledging differences among people. You can’t help that, and I know of no one who can. It is what you do with that acknowledgement that makes you a racist (or a non-racist, in other cases). An Arab job-candidate who thinks, "Uh-uh… white interviewer? Goodbye job" is a racist. No matter how many times white people have denied  Arabs jobs on the basis of colour, those white people were individuals as much as the present interviewer. No individual can act for a group, and it is wrong to see what an individual does and think that others with the same physical traits would act similarly.

Racism is the Ottoman massacre of Armenians, it is slavery, it is the holocaust, it is apartheid, insults, cruelty, lots of cruelty, stupidity, cruel stupidity, cruel insults, and blind opposition to laws like affirmative action. Clinton was probably right when he said of affirmative action, mend it, don’t end it. Following are some comments by various speakers on the subject of racism and discrimination. The aim of the passages here is to get you to see a variety of views, and to ponder the situation with a maximum of opinions before you.

"Black pride" is said to be a wonderful and worthy thing, but anything that could be construed as an expression of White pride is a form of hatred. It is perfectly natural for third-world immigrants to expect school instruction and driver’s tests in their own languages, whereas for native Americans to ask them to learn English is racist. [www.stormfront.org]

Of the many sorry things about the contemporary United States that the Katrina catastrophe has exposed, perhaps none is more depressing than what it showed about the abiding divide in American thinking about race and racism. The televised and photographed spectacle of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in particular revealed that the vast majority of those worst affected were black, in numbers disproportionate even to the large percentage of blacks within the city. [http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org]

Today in the United States and most of the White world, as soon as a White child is old enough to understand language, he is told that he should feel guilt for the crimes of his ancestors. Guilt for finding, conquering, enslaving, and killing off non-Whites around the globe… and littering in the process. Guilt, not for his own crimes, but for the crimes of other people of the same race. But he is also told that he should feel no pride in the amazing achievements of his race. No pride in the pyramids and the Parthenon, no pride in the arch and the dome, no pride in White science and technology and medicine, no pride in the glories of European painting and sculpture and music, no pride in Plato and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, no pride in the exploration of the globe and the conquest of space. Pride, not in his own achievements, but in the achievements of other people of the same race. [www.nationalvanguard.org]

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.You call me "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey" and you think it’s OK. But when I call you, nigger, Kike, Towelhead, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink you call me a racist. You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live. You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi. You have the NAACP. You have BET. If we had WET(white entertainment television) we’d be racists. If we had a White Pride Day you would call us racists. If we had white history month, we’d be racists. If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives, we’d be racists. If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships, you know we’d be racists. In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you’re not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists. You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist. I am white. I am proud. But, you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists? [www.snipeme.com]

In stark contrast to Martin Luther King’s advocacy of nonviolent resistance, the Black Panther Party believed in arming for self-defense against police brutality. While arming provided protection, it also led to incidents that ended in violent standoffs with the police. [http://afroamhistory.about.com]

I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver–no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare [www.socialistworker.org]

Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who Bush has praised as a hero of human rights, joined the chorus of critics by calling Bush arrogant and implying the president was racist for threatening to bypass the United Nations and attack Iraq. "Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white," Mandela said. Most pronouncements of racism I can at least understand, though usually not accept. This, though, makes very little sense to me. Why did Mandela choose to call Bush racist, instead of one of the many other possible pejoratives which would be at least a bit more relevant to the topic of discussion? I don’t agree with most of the criticisms of Bush concerning Iraq, but if people are going to criticize him, I’d think they’d at least choose a criticism about Iraq. [www.discriminations.us]

France was Europe’s fourth largest slave trader after Portugal, England and Spain and transported about 1.25 million slaves. France abolished slavery in 1794, after a successful revolt by slaves in the island colony of Haiti. This has already sparked debate about France’s colonial past and immigrants from most of its former colonies. There is also a question of French citizens who are direct descendants of slaves who have felt they are being marginalised. However, these groups also feel that the commemoration is too little and too late. On 10 May 2001, France passed a law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. The law requires schools to include lessons about slavery as an important part of class curriculum. [www.andnetwork.com]

Today is the 10th of May. Children are not the only ones who need to learn about history. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely
Rethabile

Morabaraba is a Sesotho boardgame played by shepherds to while away the long hours. They carve it out of flat rock and use coloured pebbles for “cows”. I had the priviledge of playing morabaraba extensively at Peka High School, with people who could pick the winner after the first few moves. It is a fun game and I’m happy to see that it isn’t dead, like many of our customs. Bravo to those who continue to play it. There’s hope.

Download the game. And if you like the game please support the programmer. That’s the whole point of the shareware and freeware systems. I wouldn’t wanna have to get my morabaraba from Microsoft for hundreds of Maloti. Bravo to the programmer.

Morabaraba has also been compared to the Somali boardgame called Shax, so it’ll probably be easier to learn for those who already know Shax.

I’d be happy if anybody could tell me about mohobelo and mokhibo (dances), liketo, khati, lesokoana, and other games. Are our children playing them or has Nintendo taken over?

Further Information:
www.suntimes.co.za
http://users.iafrica.com
www.shimbir.demon.co.uk

Applications are invited from suitably qualified Lesotho Nationals for the above-mentioned position. The incumbent will be responsible to the Customer Services Manager. The position is in Maseru, LEC Headquarters.

Qualifications:
>> B Comm. degree

Experience:
>> 2 years relevant experience.
>> Computer literacy will be an added advantage, preferably ACCPAC.
>> Minimum of five (5) years relevant experience.
>> Possession of a valid driver’s licence is a critical requirement of the job.

Personal Attributes:
>> Good interpersonal and people skills.
>> Methodical and disciplined approach to work.
>> Personal traits: self motivated, disciplined and high integrity.
>> Good interpersonal and people skills.
>> Methodical and disciplined approach to work.
>> Personal traits: self-motivated, disciplined and high integrity.

Key Performance Areas The incumbent will be responsible for performing the following:
>> Receipt of cash from electricity consumers.
>> Balance cash against audit trail.
>> Prepare deposit slips.
>> Assist the Service Center Supervisor in receipts balancing.
>> May be requested to assume Customer Services Clerical duties from time to time.
>> Coordination of customer service centre activities.
>> Attendance to and resolution of customer queries and complaints.
>> Ensure adherence by subordinates to customer care principles, procedures and guidelines.
>> Ensure that the supervisors balance cash collected daily.
>> Liase with cash collection companies contracted by LEC and all other service stations in order to compile reports of cash collected.
>> Ensure that cash collected is banked daily and that information on cash deposited is exported to Finance Division.
>> Management of LEC Front Desk and the Project Tracking Tool (Coral View)

How To Apply :
Interested candidates must submit their applications, CVs and certified copies of their certificates and transcripts to the Human Resources Manager, P O Box 423, Maseru 100, or hand deliver at the Registry, LEC Head Office on or before 09-05-2006 at 16:00. References should be made to ECOMM: CD 53 on all applications. [www.lec.co.ls]

There we were — after celebrating an afternoon birthday party, after the meal, the cake, the champagne and the rest — watching music videos on the telly. The singer, Pink, came along and left, with that reprise of Eurythmics’s Sweet Dreams (are Made of This). Mary J. Blige came next, and one of the comments uttered was, elle n’est même pas belle. She isn’t even pretty. "Holy Jaysus!" I thought. "Pink is pretty?"

Granted, the comment was made by a pre-teen, but what is this pre-teen a victim of? A victim of the telly, and the image it spreads of what beauty is? Past images and snippets of conversation rushed through my mind. Sistuhs wearin’ straight hair. An acquaintance telling me the reason Ethiopians are a beautiful lot is because their traits stray but little from European traits. Meaning: Blacki Africans are ugly. The television, its commercials, society, are ripping us off by telling us white people are more beautiful than other peoples.

My 6-year old daughter, a beautiful "zebra-kid", wants pony-tails and an even lighter skin. Stop the bloody world and let me off, or keep it going and let me wage my fight. I spent a good quarter of an hour this morning on the way to school telling her how proud I was of my blackness, and her mum of her whiteness. And that she (my daughter) should be proud of her light-brown skin and of her double heritage.

I’ve never met Mike Golby. Well, I’ve never met him the traditional way. Otherwise we met a long time ago and have spent virtual time together. He’s conscious of the world around him, all of the world around him, all of the facets of the world around him, and all of the nooks and crannies of each of the facets of the world around him.

Mike has a crystal clear roadmap in his head. OK, I’ve never met Mike Golby, but when I do, he’d better have in his possession some braaivleis, a gramophone, Maluti beer and a ping-pong table.

In the meantime I wish him, and those he cares about, a good anniversary, and more of the glue that binds people together.

1. http://kdiga.blogspot.com: Last night, I came back from a two day trip of an amazing view of another part of South Africa called the Drakensburg. It is this amazing range of mountains with a completely flat top and green covering all around the ‘burg.
2. http://www.boingboing.net: An American evangelical franchise is plastering posters around the poorest areas of Lesotho, promising “miraculous” cures for AIDS. Headed by Ohio-based preacher Ernest Angley, the flyers effectively equate “salvation” with medical treatment.
3. http://mapleleafpolitics.blogspot.com: This is the kind of thing that gives Christianity a bad name. This guy, out of Ohio, and his “ministries” are in one of the poorest parts of Africa - Lesotho - telling people that he can rid them of their AIDS and other health problems. Now Rev. Angley may actually think that prayer will help these people, but he is doing much more harm to them than help.
4. http://worldin4months.blogspot.com: Yesterday we got a tour around the facilities here and got to meet Neo. He was abondoned by his mother and came to the hospital when he was 9 months old. He is now a little over a year old. He is HIV negative. They don’t have an adoption serivce here in Lesotho.
5. http://axlinafrica.blogspot.com: Last Thursday Roxie took to the road once again, this time heading to the southern Drakensberg. Our plans included a slightly elaborate trip for Saturday just across the border into the Sehlabathebe National Park in Lesotho.

Courtesy of Nguni.com, who holds all the rights to the snap.

Rapid eye movement sleep. REM sleep occurs in brief spurts of increased activity in the brain and body. REM is considered the dreaming stage of sleep. It is characterized by the darting of the eyes under the eyelids [Source].

Others say that it is, "the stage of sleep that is characterized by decreased muscle tone, rapid eye movements and dreaming," or "the stage of sleep during which the most vivid (though not all) dreams occur. During this stage, the eyes move rapidly, and the activity of the brain’s neurons is quite similar to that during waking hours. It is the lightest form of sleep; people awakened during REM usually feel alert and refreshed." Have you ever been aware that you were asleep, but felt you couldn’t move your legs or arms, and tried to scream? It’s called sleep paralysis and it is due to REM. Your brain zaps your skeletal muscles and paralyses them.

During rapid eye movement sleep, the brain’s neurons are just about as excited as they are during waking hours. The resultant sleep is thus light, and that’s when we dream.The phase "is marked by extensive physiological changes, such as accelerated respiration, increased brain activity, eye movement, and muscle relaxation." The dreaming is most probably due to the heightened brain activity and the relaxed, or "paralysed," voluntary muscles.

It is said that the brain puts voluntary muscles into this lethargic state to prevent the dreamer acting out their dream. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes and forgets to rouse voluntary muscles. When sleep paralysis fails to occur (the brain doesn’t zap skeletal muscles into paralysis), the person has REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD; and such people often do act out their dreams.

In the preceding paragraph I said, "the brain awakes and forgets to rouse voluntary muscles." What if it forgets for a good while? The brain’s up, aware of what’s going on, but the person can’t move. Could this constitute an out-of-body experience? Turns out that yes, it could. And well, I’ll be damned (no pun intended). First the healing power of prayer was scientifically disproved, and now this. And it seems to explain the whole experience, too, including the tunnel and the white light and the feeling of peacefulness, described by many who’ve had a near-death-experience.

In the REM study, "researchers compared 55 people who’d had a near-death experience to 55 people of the same age and gender who hadn’t had this kind of phenomenon. For this study, a near-death experience was defined as a life-threatening event (such as a heart attack or traffic crash) when a person felt a number of sensations, including a sense of being outside their physical body, unusual alertness, seeing an intense light, and having a feeling of peace" [Source].

For one, people who had had near death experiences were found to have a badly regulated sleep/wakefulness frontier. These people can also have REM while they’re awake and … really, really awake. Segundo, "the same parts of the brain are activated when people dream as in near-death experiences" [Source]. And third, "the near-death study group had a significantly higher rate (60 percent
compared with 24 percent)" [Source] of rapid eye movement intrusion.

“Lesotho’s ‘Know Your Status’ campaign, the first of its kind worldwide, will offer confidential and voluntary HIV testing and counselling with the aim of reaching all households by the end of 2007.”
http://www.alertnet.org

Yes, know your status. Are you HIV-positive or are you not HIV-positive? If you are, then what are you gonna do? The sangoma isn’t your best bet, because (s)he will tell you to have sex with a virgin. Be aware that sex with a virgin only spreads the virus; it does not and will not cure you. So what are you gonna do?

If you’re smart you’ll inform yourself on the virus and the affliction. Ask medical doctors and nurses what they advise. Take any medicine you are given. White people may have hurt black people before, but they did not make condoms to curb the black population. Condoms actually protect you, if you’re HIV-negative, and they protect your sexual partner, if you’re HIV-positive. Condoms do not reduce your manhood. Wear a condom.

The Know Your Status campaign will not succeed without your willing participation. Get tested, and encourage your friends to get tested, too. We have the third highest rate of AIDS infection in the world. That’s a lot. Forget the witch-doctor (listen to your medical doctor), wear a condom (or abstain), and get tested.

“In a country where fighting misinformation is a major part of the battle against HIV/AIDS, I am not sure these crusaders have picked the right side. The sad thing is, I don’t even think they are ill-intentioned. I am willing to bet Angley and his gang are here at a loss, funded by their church in Ohio. It’s not a scam: they really believe in what they are dispensing. (Though I bet their home church in Ohio is not doing too shabbily…) No matter how many people show up to a crusade in Maseru, an offering plate passed among the poor here is not going to make a dent in the airfare or hotel budget of Angley and his friends.”
http://wakanaka.blogspot.com

“Whatever the case it was clear that he’s using the Aids pandemic to make as much money as possible, promising people that they and their entire families can be healed of Aids through him.”
http://www.tashitagg.com

www.46664.com

A horse trail in Lesotho stands out as the first time in my life that I have ever developed blisters on my behind. By the time the trail came to an end, four days later, there wasn’t a part of my body that did not ache.

For days, that bony pony, with the unlikely name of Snowy, rolled me through mountain passes and down ravines, where a slight movement meant a drop of 3 000m.

At the completion of the trail, I felt as if I’d conquered Everest and from the look on Snowy’s equine face, it was obvious he felt he’d conquered me. Which he had. For at least a month afterwards, I walked with my legs apart.
http://www.int.iol.co.za

These guys have a conspicuous, blue, circular, "Did-you-know" space that proclaims: Did you know. Formerly known as Basutoland, Lesotho gained independence from South Africa in 1966.

An interesting analysis by the Head Heeb reminds us of the dire situation Lesotho is up against. Lesotho is up against dry hunger, widespread and entrenched. That calls for a minute of silence. The picture that goes with the article did me in. It reminded me that the phenomenon is not new, and that from the late 1960s Lesotho has been sending topsoil to the ocean via South Africa. Lengope. That’s the name of what you see in the picture. One lengope, two or more mangope. Lesotho has tons of mangope, which have even become part of the culture. They serve some purposes and can be anything from a village frontier to a herdboys’ loo, or both. The English name for lengope is "donga." One of the most interesting aspects of the Head Heeb’s analysis is the part about solutions. How do you stop your top-soil from doing a bunk! And has anybody bothered to find out and implement whatever answers are out there?

Wind erosion may still occur even if preventive measures are taken. Dry soil, poor snow cover, poor residue cover from low-yielding crops, and persistent strong winds make controlling erosion a formidable challenge. It takes only one serious wind erosion event in 20 years to negate all the careful management of the intervening years. Emergency controls are used when wind erosion is imminent or has started. Increasing the surface roughness of a field or covering the soil with straw or manure are the two basic emergency measures. Increasing surface roughness A rougher surface reduces wind speed at the soil surface so the wind is less able to move soil particles. Ripping clay soils: Ripping clay soil using spikes will usually bring up non-erodible clods to create a rough surface. If the clods are likely to break down quickly, then the distance between passes should be about 5 m (15 feet). This way, the procedure can be repeated later on the untreated strip if necessary. Ripping is an emergency measure to reduce wind ersosion on clay soil. Listing sandy soils: Listing is used for sandy soils because they do not produce durable clods. Listing ridges the soil and brings up firmer subsoil. It must be perpendicular to the eroding wind, and should always start on the upwind side of the field. Treating the entire field will greatly reduce erodibility. Lister shovels are only mounted on the back gang of a heavy duty cultivator. Lister shovels (either 33 or 38 cm (13 or 15 in.)) are commonly used in irrigated potato production in southern Alberta. Properly listed, the flat surface of a field can be changed so that ridges are 25 to 30 cm (10 to 12 in.) higher than the troughs, and about 90 cm (36 in.) apart.

I found that in under two minutes flat. So the conclusion is that the Authorities found it, too, and are onto the problem. The characteristics of erosion-prone terrain that are mentioned above are exactly what Lesotho is, right down to the poor snow cover bit. There was no snow in Lesotho last year, which also means that there was no melting snow to feed the rivers. But I’m beginning to carry on where I shouldn’t. The Head Heeb has raised many of these points and put them side by side with their respective "solutions".

“Lesotho’s relationship with South Africa has long been one of rich neighbour, poor neighbour, as the BBC News website’s Justin Pearce found when he visited a village in southern Lesotho. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk

“From South Africa to Lesotho, to Zambia and Nigeria anger is mounting over what one union leader called ‘a tsunami of cheap Chinese goods’ that many say is choking off local industries and wiping out jobs.”
http://www.int.iol.co.za

UPDATE:
African countries and companies should take a leaf from Vietnam and stop whining. They are able to compete with China why cant we do the same. See the post If Vietnam can compete with China why not Africa
——————–

The above comment fell into the Spaminator net because the author had not included details like name and email. The comment is genuine, though. And interesting. Visit the author’s weblog too.

It is true that it sounds more benign when called thus: capital punishment. But it is ‘killing’. Let’s call it not capital punishment, not the death penalty, but killing. Stanley Tookie Williams died today after being injected with a lethal concoction. Let us not say that, either. Let us say, Stanley Tookie Williams was killed today. Tookie had allegedly taken the lives of four of his countrymen. That sounds too soft, too; he had allegedly killed four people with a shotgun at point blank. So he deserved to die. Or did he?

Who killed these people? If we kill Tookie for killing, who kills us for killing Tookie? Who kills the person or people who killed 30,000 civilians in Iraq, plus about 2,150 American soldiers, plus non-civilian Iraqis? Tookie had no right to do what he did. What right have we to “do to him what he did to others?”

The pain of family and friends must necessarily come into play. Tookie’s victims had family. The pain must be tremendous, even after such a long time (The crime occurred 26 years ago). Twenty-five years ago someone pressed the trigger of a machine gun and blew my sleeping, three-year-old nephew to bits, brain and all. A few years before the same person or someone else had snuffed out my brother’s life. We don’t know how. We were never given the body.

I’m in no way trying to compare pains, but rather to make my statement more understandable. It is the statement that “if those who kill your loved ones are killed for it, your loved ones do not return.” If you quote that, credit it to me, Rethabile Masilo. What’s more, I feel that the perpetrators of those crimes against my family are now in deep shit, both as human beings, full-stop, and as human beings before God. If my family and friends had gotten them killed, and then gloated, wouldn’t we be the ones in deep shit today? Besides

I know from talking to many others who have shared that chamber with me before that when months or even years have gone by, there will be no real closure or peace after what we saw Tuesday morning. Williams will not be alive for the supporters who wanted to save him, and the people he was convicted of killing will still leave huge empty spaces in the hearts of their loved ones. [Source]

Killing is wrong, no matter who does it and for whatever reason. Let’s start from there, before we even think of working our way out toward whether Tookie should have been pardoned, or whether the killer of 30,000+ people should go scot free, or whether the system is or is not flawed, killing innocent people, or whether the system is or is not racially biased, killing more minorities than other Americans, or whether religion gives us the right to play God and kill, or whether killing criminals lowers the crime rate… Let us start from the beginning and gently remind ourselves that killing is wrong. Now, what?

Relevant reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

“Styles Phumo’s side not only failed to defend the Cosafa Cup in Durban at the weekend, but they also lost their pride after crashing out in a penalty shootout with Lesotho after a goalless semi-final.”
http://www.news24.com

Aids is killing about 70 people a day in Lesotho.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/

What will you do?
Well, I want to tell you that I am now the proud sponsor of a 5 year old girl from Lesotho, named Mathapelo. She sent me a letter the other day–she drew a cat and a girl and a house, and it made me cry.
http://inexorablyloved.blogspot.com

Mosisili in Beijing for China visit
Lesotho’s Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili arrived in Beijing Wednesday afternoon, kicking off a 7-day official visit to China.
http://english.people.com.cn

Lesotho 2005 - Nic White Biking
There is a road through Lesotho. It is the highest road, 260km long, that I have ridden over, in Southern Africa. Ten riders joined me and my friends and spent four days riding this road over ‘the Roof of Africa!’
http://www.supercycling.co.za

Tsunami Money Could Be Directed Toward Africa, Clinton Says
Money left over from donations to help the areas of Asia devastated by the tsunami in December 2004 could be directed toward crises in Africa, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, former President Clinton said.
http://www.kaisernetwork.org

Lesotho to launch door-to-door AIDS tests
The tiny African kingdom of Lesotho will launch door-to-door HIV tests to mark World AIDS Day on Thursday
http://www.alertnet.org

Lesotho struggles to fight Aids
The tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho is one of the world’s worst Aids-hit countries with a 27% infection rate
http://www.news24.com

1. Lesotho is one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per capita income of £340
2. Lesotho has the third highest HIV rate, with a 29% infection rate for people between 16 and 49 years of age
3. In 2003, 29 000 people in Lesotho died from AIDS/HIV-related causes
4. Lesotho’s entire population is to be screened for HIV
5. Lesotho is the first country in the world to offer HIV tests to its entire population
6. King Letsie III is likely to become the first monarch to take the test publicly
7. Life expectancy in Lesotho has dropped from 52 to just 34 years since 2000
8. The brain drain drawing Africa’s nurses to the West has also been blamed for exacerbating the problem
9. In Lesotho, all members of the population over the age of 12 will know their HIV status by the end of 2007
10. Tests cannot be mandatory under international human rights law
11. The simple act of testing could have as important an impact as as a moderately effective vaccine
12. The test is simple and only requires a finger-prick of blood that takes 15 minutes to show the if the virus is present
13. The idea of testing is going to be introduced within each community through village chiefs at a pitso
14. Only 21 000 people in Lesotho took an HIV test in 2004
15. 40.3 million people in the world are living with AIDS
16. Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst affected part of the world with 26.0 million sufferers
17. The highest rates in the world are in Swaziland (39%), Botswana (37%) and Lesotho (29%)

[Source]

A young couple has experienced the responsibility and reward of teaching life-sustaining skills to people of a Third World country — and made dear friends at the same time.

Leaving those acquaintances behind, after serving two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Lesotho, a nation on the southern tip of Africa, is the only unpleasant memory held today by Adam and Stephanie Springer of Manhattan.

Adam, 26, is the son of Randy and Diane Springer of Gas and a 1997 graduate of Iola High School. He and his wife, who he met while a student at Kansas State University, were in town Sunday to visit his family and speak to the congregation at Grace Baptist Church in Iola about their Peace Corps service from August 2003 through this fall.

Stephanie, 25, and a Manhattan native, recalled later in the day a dinner ceremony held in the Springers’ honor as they were preparing to leave the country. The governor of the area where they had lived spoke of the importance of their work in his country, as well as their continuing mission for mankind. (more…)

“Sotho” has moved to this address after a harrowing experience with PHP and database problems. Blogsome does use Wordpress, however, so I know my way around already. Please update your links.

I have the daunting task of transferring old Sotho posts to this new home (Yes, I’d saved the database beforehand); I just don’t wanna lose a few years of blogging. I will be faithful to the original dates as I repost. Again, thanks fot the visit, and please update your links.

Rethabile

Want some tips to straighten your hair? Carolyn M. Rodgers has a poem called For Sistuhs Wearin’ Straight Hair. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find it online. Yesterday I saw a sistuh with curly hair… an afro, in fact. She was beautiful. A sight for sore eyes, because my eyes were sore from all the straight hair sistuhs are wearin’ these days. Every single morning as I ride the metro to work I’m reminded of the late sixties, when it was hip in Lesotho to have straight hair and a light complexion. My mom and her friends smeared a product called Ambi special all over their faces and necks, while an iron comb was in the fire, waiting to sizzle their hair straight. Every single morning, as I go to work, that oily 60s smell of burning hair hits me, hard.

Ambi Skin Discoloration Fade Cream gradually fades dark areas for even, natural skin tone. It is specially formulated to treat skin discolorations such as freckles, age and liver spots, and pigment in the skin that may result from pregnancy or the use of oral contraceptives. use on affected areas as directed, it will help restore beautiful, even-toned skin.
[ Source… ]

The blurb is politically correct. It mentions freckles and other spots, yet the product has a smiling sistuh on its box. Freckles aren’t very common among sistuhs. But back to our topic. Was it to look like baas? Well, what else would it be. The issue is the same wherever one people oppresses another, and manages to blatantly or subconsciously convince the oppressed party that it is ugly. In Lesotho’s case, it was a blatant declaration related to both colonial and South-African racism, and subconscious by way of adverts, barbie and the sight of all the rich, glamorous, white folks in hotels and casinos. So we set about scouring our skins and sizzling our hair. Some people have tried to console me by saying “The grass is always greener on the other side.” White folks scorch their skins on the beach or by means of creams or artificial light. Maybe. Hell, it doesn’t even matter much, does it? It hardly means that if a sistuh’s wearin’ straight hair she’s a slave. The fact remains, however, that every morning I’ll never be able to help staring at all of them with their straight hair, wondering how they’d look with a kinky hair-do.