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only wash yourself
Entry 71 of 79 | show all | print this entry |
It is very good to be male in Basotho society, and it is excellent to be a guest. To be a male guest is absolutely unbeatable. When I am discovered washing my socks: "Ntate John, why are you washing?" and the socks are immediately removed from my grasp as you would take the cookies from a small child. And when I try to rinse my cup: "Ntate John, you must only wash yourself." All right, I can do that.
I am staying with Adel and Ntate Molise, their 12-year-old son Karabelo, and Ntate Molise's sister. Adel and I both taught at Semonkong in Lesotho in 1980-82. Adel recently resigned her teaching position in order to open a creche (kindergarten and day-care). Ntate Molise has two minivans which he and a friend use for providing local transport. I got here from Gaborone in one day, just managing to connect with my second bus in Johannesburg, then taking a combie (shared taxi) from Harrismith to Qwa Qwa.
Qwa Qwa is in the South African state of KwaZulu-Natal near the eastern boundary of the Free State, under the Drakensberg Escarpment which forms the South African border with Lesotho. It's like a huge sprawling township which, until you look into the political history of South Africa, seems to have very little reason to exist. It's hard to say, but it seems there could be close to half a million people here.
In the old days a township was a residential area for Africans, situated near (and providing a labour force for) a white town. Originally there was a town here called Witsie's Hoek. But in the dying days of white rule, one of the final, and futile, efforts to make apartheid work involved establishing about ten bantustans which would be considered the homelands of all the African people. Many people had never set foot in their nominal homelands. Qwa Qwa was to be the homeland of the Sotho people. There is even a grand building on a hilltop that was to be the administrative and legislative building, but the whole scheme was overtaken by the tide of history and abandoned before it could be fully realized.
Now Qwa Qwa is still the name of an administrative district in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, and the town itself is called Phuthadijhaba. The setting is beautiful, a sweeping plateau about 1500 m high, cut by occasional small rivers and dominated by the steep, flat-topped hills that rise 100 m or so and are characteristic of the Free State and Lesotho. But there is no sewage system, little street lighting, and many houses lack electricity and running water.
"Ntate John, your water is ready for washing." I find a basin of hot water in the bathtub. But I still have to wash myself.
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