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