When you leave to do Peace Corps in Lesotho many of your friends and relatives tell you they will visit. Few actually do. For me, my few visiting friends comprised Drew, Katie and John, who just left.
The best thing to do in Lesotho is walk through its mountains. Not drive, not ride horses, walk. For more than two years now I've dreamed of taking some friends on a hike deep in the Maloti where the villages are more thatch than tin, and even grated roads are non-existent.
So of course, Drew, Katie and John were in for a hike. We chose to start in Qacha's Nek and proceed northward into Thaba Tseka to the small mountain town of Sehonghong. It was actually Drew who chose the route. He looked at my wallmap and said, "Let's go from here to here."
I figured the journey would require three days at first, but we didn't have three days, so I refigured it as two long days. We'll do it fast and light, I decreed.
When we arrived in Qacha's Nek and I first mentioned our hike idea to a woman there she gasped and told us not to try it. She said that we should go by car on another route to Sehonghong. It's not the destination of Sehonghong that we want, I explained, it's the stuff along the way. She then rethought our plans and admitted that, if we really wanted to, we could walk to Sehonghong from there. Great news. It's possible. We left the next morning.
That first day began quite smoothly. We mostly followed the Senqu river, and though the morning was crisp and breezy, it became pleasant and we all felt full of energy as we soaked in the sights and greeted kind Basotho along the path. In the late afternoon we climbed up a hill near a village where two men came running over to us. We told them where we were headed, to which they argued among themselves, "I think it will take them three days to get there from here."
"To Sehonghong? No, at least four, maybe five days," said the other.
Five days? Why? But how could we argue with them? We didn't have a map with us. I had never hiked in this area before. We only knew what we had seen on the wallmap before leaving my house, along with what other people had told us on the way.
We didn't have five days. We worried a little. After all, these guys ought to know what they're talking about. They certainly know better than we do. They suggested we spend the night in their village. We decided we wanted to make a little more ground before nightfall. One of them then walked us a bit in the right direction and wished us good travels.
We crossed a stream, ascended a steep hill, and set up camp as the sun slipped behind a snow-capped peak. It had been a long day. Tomorrow might be four days long. We couldn't help but eat nearly all of our food before falling asleep. We left ourselves a handful of granola each for the next morning.
I figured there would be some sort of small shop where we could buy some food in one of the villages along the way, so after we finished the granola that morning and headed off I wasn't fretting.
After a few hours we passed through the village of Libobeng where the folks who lived there invited us to drink some 'motoho', a porridge made of sorghum. We were grateful. I snapped a group photo, asked them for the nearest post office address and told them I'd send the picture to them soon. A woman then walked us out of the village and showed us the way.
Up hills, down hills. Patches of snow covered the ground.
People in small villages along the trail told us we were getting close to Sehonghong and that we'd be able to get there today, but there were no shops in these villages, and the proximity of Sehonghong began to sound less and less promising as we became hungrier. And then the streams disappeared altogether. Thirsty and hungry.
Sehonghong was still not in sight when the sun fell behind the mountains on that second day. But before it grew too dark to see we arrived at the footbridge we had been told about and saw a plateau on the other side of the river. On top of it was Sehonghong.
We were beat, but at least we could finally see the destination. It had become about the destination at that point. I love feeling exhausted on hikes, even hungry and thirsty, because it makes the food and water and rest that you eventually find so so sweet.
So the hike ended up being slightly strenuous, but my friends got to see the deep Senqu river gorge, remote mountain villages, kind traditional Basotho. We did it all without a map; my Sesotho worked well enough to get us directions along the way. I had given my friends the experience I had long wanted to.
It was only after they left that I felt an emptiness and recognized that they had taken more than their own experiences back to America with them. They took something from me as well. I realized that the prospect of guiding my friends through the mountains like that had been giving me an incentive to remain very immersed in learning Sesotho and about Lesotho. Being able to take Drew and Katie and John on that hike was like the reward for all of my efforts.
I had finally performed. I had been exploited, in the way I had always wanted.